4850 Crossfire HDMI Audio Realtek Driver CPU use Svchost / Dcom / Plug

binkky

Distinguished
Jun 30, 2008
2
0
18,510
I don't know if I'm asking this in the right place, but it can't hurt, youz a buncha smart folks here.

I just upgraded. Parts list
Intel Core Quad 9450 stock speed
Asus Rampage Formula 775 X48 Chipset
Using onboard Soundmax extension card
2X HIS ATI 4850's stock speed
4gb Corsair XMS2 Ram 5-5-5-12 (I think)
Vista Ultimate

Now, I'm not a system building noob, everything is updated as far as drivers to the point of 6/29/2008. Any new driver chipset / other that's out, I have.

For HDMI Audio out, I loaded the Realtek 1.96 drivers because that's the only way apparently to get appropriate 5.1/7.1 out from my computer to my 1.3a compatible HDMI receiver. (Thanks for being on the ball with drivers once again ATI...thanks again).

Here is the issue. Even if my receiver is off (device inactive in Sound menu) My DCom and Plug and Play service is eating CPU like mad 20 - 40% use on all 4 cores even though I'm not doing anything. The only way to stop the madness is to go into device manager and disable (or uninstall) the 2 ATI HD Sound devices (under sound). Doing so drops my CPU use to between 0 and 6% on all 4 cores.

Am I the only one seeing this?

I've read in places that this is because of Vista Audio enhancements. I tried disabling enhancements on both sound devices, but even with them disabled I'm getting this obnoxious CPU load.

As a note, This issue also happened when using a Creative Audigy SE 7.1 (instead of onboard sound, I had the extra part, and I tested it in the course of normal troubleshooting).

Please tell me I'm not alone :(

 

binkky

Distinguished
Jun 30, 2008
2
0
18,510
Apologies - additional information. Vista is 32 bit, and I have confirmed this issue on multiple clean reinstalls of Vista.
 

wallan37

Distinguished
Jul 6, 2008
5
0
18,510
I have the exact same issue.

I have the following hardware :

ASUS Rampage Formula
Q6600
8GB RAM
2 X Sapphire HD4870 in Crossfire
Vista x64

Fortunately for me, I don't use the HDMI functionality of the cards, so I disable the devices and I'm ok, but it took me a while to find out they were at fault for loading up the CPU.

One thing, when I let windows detect the devices and install the generic drivers, the cpu usage was normal. Only after downloading the drivers from Realtek did the issue start. But I need the Realtek drivers install so that the Soundmax get installed properly otherwise it gets confused I guess because it sees 3 sound cards and does not install.

Sorry I can't help more, I can only confirm that this is most probably a driver issue.

You are not alone :)
 

a 6pack in

Distinguished
Nov 12, 2007
157
0
18,680
yo, there is 8.7 beta also available. that is what i am running and its great. try that. i dont have CF i will come friday. but its worth a shot. make sure you use drive sweeper to remove all bits of old drivers from ati/nvidia out of your system.

so you have a clean driver install.
 

a 6pack in

Distinguished
Nov 12, 2007
157
0
18,680
the new driver is for 4850//4870

8.7 check the thread list here. I posted up the links.

also. the driver sweeper works like a charm.

what i ment by the statement of ati/nvidia was that if you previously had an nvidia card, this tool removes all the .ini files that you may have had lingering around.
 

wallan37

Distinguished
Jul 6, 2008
5
0
18,510
Actually, the issue discussed here is with CPU utilization and it only comes comes when you install the Realtek Drivers for the ATI Cards, with the default install they use the Windows drivers are are working fine, so I don't think a Catalyst update would help.

The issue is that if you don't install the Realtek drivers and you have an integrated soundmax audio you can't install the drivers for it.
 

aaronee

Distinguished
Sep 12, 2008
1
0
18,510
THANK YOU!!.. I have spent the last 3 hours trying to figure out why my brand new (self built) machine was pinging 50-80% cpu usage and the disk was constantly spinning. It was so bad that trying to browse the C Drive was near impossible.

The issue is not the SVChost DCOM itself, but whatever these audio components were doing where making the SVCHOST use up process time and were causing over 15+ items to be writing to my hard drive constantly. Anytime I was on Windows Explorer the cursor would oscillate to the working in background, the closer I got to certain directories in Explorer the worse it was.

Clear the devices, and now there is very little running in the resource overview window, where before it was full of activity.

THANK YOU.. I never would have thought to try disabling those.