I have a Asus P5N-E SLI with bios 0608 and a sound blaster x-fi fatal1ty edition and i notice subtle crackling and popping noises when i play WoW and moreso when i play BF2142 on windows xp. I guess im just sht out of luck? Dont know what else i can do other than switching motherboards?? Any suggestions

Have you updated the Creative driver? Have you tried the onboard audio to see if it's the Creative card? Have an Audigy 2 card that recently headed south. When try the onboard audio disable the Creative card Could also try a different set of speakers

From my knowledge the X-fi always had issues in BF2142, supposedly the updated drivers on the creative site fixed it.

You could also try turning on/off EAX and **** like that to see if the issue still exists on a different mode.

Also had a Socket 939 ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe, the only available PCI slot was between the PCI-E slots, the PCI slots next to the PCI-E slots were unusable because of the video card coolers, forcing the location to go between the 2 PCI-E slots, my Creative X-FI Extreme Music Soundcard exibited the same popping and crackling sound, I had 2 other M/Bs an EPoX and DFI Lanparty, that had usable PCI slots below the 2nd PCI-E slot, neither of those M/Bs had any sound corruption with the X-FI Soundcard.

Im almost tempted to just buy a bad axe 2 motherboard since ASUS hasnt replied to 3 of my emails yet. Its been 3 weeks. Shame such a good company 2 years ago is going down hill. Onboard sound works fine btw, no crackles or pops. Also, i have the x-fi on the bottom of my rig 3 slots away from anything with a fan blowing on it 24/7, dont know what else i can do. Every driver on the computer is up to date as well and there is no IRQ sharing.

If your onboard audio is working, then this really seems to be a problem with the Creative card not the mobo. If the card is under warranty, I'd send it back. Have you checked the Creative Support site?

The card works fine on my other computer , sorry i forgot to say that. my bad

Forget emailing ASUS! The exact same thing happened to me, you need to call them on the phone 812-282-2787 call and talk to a person and you'll get results.

4ryan6, So you had sound problems and called asus and they resolved the problems for you? I really dont want to spend hours on the phone with asus if i dont have to if you know what i mean...

Mine used to pop and crackle to, totally different boards, I fixed by either going to the sound control mixer and x'ing out all the in/out stuff I wasn't using or by disconnecting the stupid CD audio cable because I noticed the sound went away when I opened my CD door tray?. Anyway, one of these things fixed it.?? You can try both, mine's been working well since.

No I didn't say ASUS solved the sound problems, I said phoning would get you access to ASUS over the emailing effort, ASUS RMAd a bad M/B for me.


My comments relating to the ASUS/X-FI sound issue was tied into my first post to you.

Originally the only way I resolved my problem was to replace the M/B, however since then I did reuse the RMAd M/B for a little while with the X-FI using the last Creative X-FI drivers released, however after installing that driver do not let Windows update install any drivers for Creative and you shouldn't have any more problems.