Audigy 2ZS keeps locking up my Epox 8rda3+ system :(

[Nate-X]

How could I go about fixing the problem? Could the sound card be bad? or the motherboard? It's in games that it's locking up.

I have an Epox 8rda3+ (I think it's rev 1.. whatever newegg started selling first.) I updated to the latest bios, and have tried all available drivers for the soundcard and it still locks up in games.. will just freeze and I'll hear a loud buzzing sound coming from my speakers. I've had to rely on the onboard sound to play. My power supply voltages are default, no overclocking and temps are fine. I've tried swapping my sound card in all available slots and the interrupts are always shared among onboard components (either on interrupt 11 or 5).

I'm going to go insssane! I didn't know where else to stick this.. the crashed section is for well more important stuff.. this is just to get my games fixed but is on an Epox system.. ahh well!

[Goat Fajitas]

Mine works great...

Try swapping the PCI slot and see if that helps.

Are you using the full driver set, or just the windows default drivers ?

[Gizmo]

Do you suppose it is possible you have a duff sound card?

[Nate-X]

Not sure I tried swapping slots.. I'm using the big like 12mb download off the creative site for the drivers

[Gizmo]

Are there any chips on that card that are in a socket? If so, one trick you might try is to reseat them. Generally, what I do is just hold the card in my hand with my fingers on the back side directly under the chip, and then I use my thumb and gently but firmly squeeze the chip between my fingers and thumb. If the chip is in need of being reseated, you will generally hear a 'click' as the chip seats into the socket.

[FreeBird]

Just in case, because you did not mentioned it.

You have to disable in the BIOS everything, which belongs to the onboard soundccard (Soundcard, MIDI,...

[Nate-X]

I disabled AC97 but didn't see anything else in the bios relating to the onboard sound that can be disabled. I talked with tech support earlier and am going to try what they suggested once I get home from work. Hopefully it works

[danrok]

AC97 refers to the onboard sound, in your BIOS settings.

[Nate-X]

Originally Posted by danrok

AC97 refers to the onboard sound, in your BIOS settings.

Heheh I know.. I meant to say I didn't see anything "else" in the bios to disable. Also, the creative guy told me that perhaps it might be fixed by disabling ACPI in the bios.. thing is.. if it's disabled, the system constantly reboots.. Could it be a bad motherboard after all?

[gimle]

there is a solution for that problem am really desperate :'(

[MiL]

There are some issues with Nforce2 boards and Audigy 2 crads and they relate to PCI bus and PCI latency-es. I for one have crackling noises from time to time in games when CPU load is high. my PCI bus is under lots of stress since I have 4 PCI cards including DVB sat. card. Some of my friends with Nforce2 and Audigy2 have similar issues. It helps a bit to set PCI lateny in bios to 0. but I never had probles with crashes/freezes!

What are your other components?

Have you tried disabling following in BIOS?

1. Fast writes

2. Game port

3. Midi port

4. PCI lateny in bios to 0 instead default 32

I knew that VIA chipsets had problems with PCI cards, didnt know Nvidia does also, but it seems that way...

[gimle]

i have a 8rda3+ rev 1.1 barton 2500+ buffalo pc3200 256m seagate barracuda sata 120g radeon 7000ve thats all, i make all the thing you tell me and nothing happen , EVEN take off the Sound card the problem still there

pd: sorry my english

[MiL]

No additional PCI cards? I'm out of ideas...

I can only tell you I have a friend who's running 8rda3+ rev1.1 with that same Audigy2 ZS without any crashing/freezing only cracking noise from speakers from time to time.

I'm running 8rda+ rev2.2 + Audigy2 ZS also stable.

Make sure you are using latest Audigy drivers:

sba2_eax4drv_031031.exe --- 13.5 MB
SBA2_WEBUP_EAXC_031230.exe ---4.23 MB
SBA2_WEBUP_PCWDRV_1-84-40.exe ---6.34 MB
i think there's even one more update from creative...


Maybe one of the other components is faulty?

Check the RAM with memtest (http://www.memtest.org/)

[danrok]

Sometimes reducing the hardware acceleration a couple of notches in the sound card control panel will stop crackling.

Also, if you are using an Audigy make sure you have all special effects turned off within the Audigy control panel.

Within the game you may be able to put sound in compatibility mode, if you are having problems. This allows the game more control over the Audigy drivers and their settings.

This guide is well worth reading:
http://www.tweaktown.com/document.ph...Id=411&dPage=1

[gimle]

thanks now am gonna reinstall windows and follow this guide

[jnansley]

I'm not quite certain about the ACPI settings, but the older nforce2 drivers were much happier when APIC is disabled. APIC is not ACPI! When disabling APIC, you will need to reinstall the Windows kernel, by changing the HAL driver. It's worth a shot, if you're about to reinstall the whole OS anyways.

This guy has a very useful page:

http://g33kflat.skankyflat.net/artic...#Standard%20PC

Change the HAL, shutdown, disable APIC (not ACPI) in BIOS, reboot.

The PCI latency setting in the BIOS rarely does anything at all. There are programs, mainly Powerstrip, which will let you force latency settings, as well as manually assign IRQs. You will find that your NVIDIA / ATI video card is sucking up as much latency as possible. This increases performance, but keeps your other devices from accessing the bus. Try twiddling with the latency values, begin by setting your video card to 128 (instead of 248 or whatever it is):

http://g33kflat.skankyflat.net/artic...undcardfix#PCI

However, if you disable APIC, you will have less IRQs available (but with lower latency!) With a typical NF2 board, you will need to decide which devices can and should be sharing IRQs.

There's always tradeoffs as far as the PCI bus is concerned. And Intel introduced the freaking 8259A (8-bit interrupt controller) in 1977 - you'd think that in 2004, we wouldn't have to fall back to PIC mode to make our soundcards work.

I would try playing with the latencies first, if that doesn't work, disable APIC, reassign your IRQs and play with the latencies some more. Once you've changed the HAL to "Standard PC", you should be able to disable ACPI as well (without reinstalling) if you want to try that.

[MiL]

hey "jnansley" and "danrok" thanks for answering!

Audio hardware acceleration under dxdiag in this case didn't help a bit, that rules out Audigy2 as a sole culprit.

PCI bus is to blame, I'm sure. "jnansley", I played with powerstrip before and I remember i set Radeon to 128 and Audigy to 64, rest to 32 and it was still problematic.

I'm pretty sure disabling APIC and probably ACPI could help. Since I'm not ready to hose my system yet, I'll wait 'till next reinstall.

Changing the HAL to "Standard PC", will re-detect all the devices again and probably mess up your system. I did that once and couldnt boot anymore, nforce drivers got messed up. I just have too many components.

[danrok]

Sound issues are not always caused by the sound card and drivers. Sometimes it is just a symptom of some other problem with the PC.

If the sound plays-up in a certain game, try reducing graphics detail and resolution then see if the sound problem still exists.

[Áedán]

Originally Posted by jnansley

I'm not quite certain about the ACPI settings, but the older nforce2 drivers were much happier when APIC is disabled.

Be aware that as we move towards other PCI buses like PCI-Express, APIC is a requirement for the bus to operate!

I know that the SB Live! series had a problem with an invalid ACPI header in the PCI table, but that was a long time ago now.

[jnansley]

Originally Posted by danrok

Sound issues are not always caused by the sound card and drivers. Sometimes it is just a symptom of some other problem with the PC.

I get crackling noises from my speakers when the cat steps on the wires and jiggles them in the socket