Games crashing w/ X-Fi Titanium

[Tronyx]

Here are my system specs since I know that is the first response I'm going to get:


EVGA nForce 750i SLI FTW

Intel Q9300 Quad Core - Stock

OCZ Reaper 4x2Gb @1066

Corsair vx550w

nVidia GTX 280

WD 320Gb HDD

Vista Business 64-bit



So I just bought the Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro PCI-e card and the installation went flawlessly. Only thing is, I can't play ANY games (well, aside from World of Warcraft, but that isn't very hardware intensive) without the game freezing and the sound playing in a loop. I will occassionally get the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSOD as well. I have also noticed that theGTX 280 and the X-Fi are using the same IRQ, but that shouldn't be problem with Vista.

I have the most recent and correct drivers for everything and my entire system was 100% stable before installing the Sound Card.

I really don't want to have to return it and go with another brand because I have always went with a Creative card and never had any issues up to this point.

Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated!



Chris

 

[gamerk316]

...You've been running an nforce board, and never had issues with Creative before? Thats a rarity...

Run memtest86 just to rule out bad RAM. Probably Creatives bad drivers though...

 

[Jim_L9]

Disable onboard sound on the motherboard.

 

[the_politician]

Disable onboard sound on the motherboard.

+1

Logic would say that your newly installed hardware is conflicting with something and sound cards are notorious (perhaps I should narrow that down to Creative sound cards) for wreaking havoc if you have not disabled your mobo sound in your BIOS.

 

[mi1ez]

There's also a chance that the sound card is the straw that broke the camel's back re. PSU. Corsair make great PSUs but the GTX280 is a hell of a power hog, and that combined with a quad etc is sucking out too much juice when gaming.

 

[Tronyx]

I disabled the on-board audio in the BIOS before I installed the card and I had ran memtest86+ for over 24 hours without any issues what so ever 2 days before installing the card.

This is my first nForce board, so I haven't used any Creative cards with that type of board yet, but with a few ASUS and Intel boards in the past.

Never thought about the PSU, but I don't have a higher one laying around to test and I don't want to spend the money on one just to troubleshoot because if it ends up being the PSU, then I'm out the money.

 

[gamerk316]

Probably a Creative/Nforce problem then. Another reason why i refuse to buy their products. Just to make sure, make sure any startup processes having to do with the onboard sound are disabled; there might be a conflict there.

I know you *should* be able to have onboard/Creative drivers installed at the same time anyway; just select the output you want in the control panel. Causes less hassle as well...

 

[Tronyx]

Well, I guess I'll shell out another 100 for the 750w version of my current PSU and see what happens. I'm gonna try just taking the damn thing out and seeing if my system is completely stable like it was before I installed the X-Fi...

 

[Tronyx]

Well, I hate to double-post, but it won't let me edit my last one...

Update:

I ordered the 750w version of my current PSU just to cover my bases, but I seem to have "fixed" the issue.

I had my ram set to 1066 (its stock frequency, when the board downs it to 800 by default) and I figured, what the heck, I'll set it back to stock and see what happens. It fixed the issue, I have been playing games non-stop for almost 12 hours now without any problems.

When I set the RAM back to 1066, the problems happen again.

I don't understand why my RAM can't run at 1066 with the sound card installed.

For sh*&s and giggles, I uninstalled it and set my RAM back to 1066 and everything worked like a charm.

I would really like to have my RAM set to 1066, but I also want the sound card installed.

Guess I'm gonna have to take the very small performance drop if I want to keep the card.