CD Audio and windows sounds skip after larger vid card install

[ru_1980]

The System:

Ultra 600W power supply
MSI K8TNeo MB (socket 754)
Amd Athlon 64 2800+
2 Gb Ultra DDR 400 Memory
Sapphire HD 3850 AGP vid card
Onboard Audio 6 Channel Realtek ALC6555
80 GB western digital HD (SATA)
320 GB western digital HD (SATA)
LG CD RW Drive internal IDE
Sony DVD (+/-) RW Drive Internal IDE

The problem:

After installing a new vid card from a x1600 pro to a HD 3850 I started getting sounds skipping....most notably on windows start up (intro music to windows skips) . Games don't skip the music/sounds except for when first loading the screen. For example when first entering a map for a game in battlefield 2 the sound skips a little then it's fine about 3-5 seconds after....also notice a slight video lag at the same time then it all smooths out and runs good. I am guessing it does that because the CPU is loaded trying to fill up the vid card memory. I never seen this as a problem as it is an old computer, and it's slow and figured now that I have a bigger vid card I am being bottlenecked by the CPU. Here is the problem, now I notice my CD playback and MP3's skip when played in Media player and in cyberlink DVD. I usually never play CD's or MP3's on the computer, but this computer is going to be the "living room" multi-media computer now and is being replaced by a new build so I would like this issue fixed so that my gf can play her music on it. Any type of video playback is ok (DVD/Mpeg etc)....rarely get any type of skipping in either video or audio of that type. Seems to be only audio tracks/files.

I have tried almost everything, I have checked other message forums and no one seems to have this type of problem. I checked to make sure the IDE channels are running in DMA mode, I tried changing media player to run in analoge mode from the optical drives, even made sure the little audio cable from the back of the CD drive is hooked to the mother board. I have 2 disk drives and both have the same issue. Not to mention the MP3 files skip too. I am finding it hard to believe a 2800+ can't play back music. The only thing I can think of is that I think the HD3850 supports audio over the DVI-I connection. I am not sure if there is some audio driver on the card or what the deal is, but I checked device manager and there are no conflicts. I also checked bios and made sure onboard audio (AC'97) was enabled. The only setting available in bios is to enable or disable (no auto settings or such) for the onboard audio.

Does anyone have any ideas of what the issue might be?
Thanks

 

[treefrog07]

Check for updated onboard sound drivers at the MSI webpage for your board, if there are some, install them. If there aren't, re-install the original drivers.

 

[ru_1980]

Ya there are updated drivers....crappy thing is, I lose my 5.1 surround capability and get only 2 channel. I had the new drivers installed but went back to the old drivers for the reason mentioned before. I'll try installing them tomorrow and see what happens. If it works then oh well. I'll let ya know.

 

[sighQ2]

Possibly 'sound properties might show competition of 2 devices.

This also sounds like an irq conflict.

You mentioned no conflict. It is possible however to have irq sharing; which is acceptable to pci devices, even if the performance is choppy, etc. This used to be a common conflict with AGP video cards sharing "same irq" as something like modem. sound, usb OR perhaps ALL OF THEM might be sharing a SINGLE IRQ. (worst case).

i DON'T know what previous cards you had installed or what other changes you made in the various slots. I don't know your mobo details either. a link to that?

The slots in use matter cos they are basically hardwired to use certain irq's - unless you have a good bios that will allow you to assign, or map, irq's. The easiest fix is to [swap cards around in various pci slots] or combinations thereof; until you get a result that shows [minimal irq sharing] in device menagerie - click on (i think) <view = devices by connection> or like that using menu in dev mgr - I assume you are on some vers of windoze.

It is possible you will not get rid of all the irq sharing - which is ok, too.

What you don't want tho, is the major performance devices sharing - like video share w sound, //usb usually shares with something cos they have so many entries, but make esp. sure that the video gets as solitary as possible.!!

You may have to spend a couple of hours shuffling card slots b4 you find a good result w reasonable sharing - this isn't a issue so much anymore since microslop changed the ACPI standards and obsolesced a lot of hardware at xp release time.

That's my best guess - and this might be out to lunch - but it sounds like that old problem; and your sys is kinda oldish. What makes me doubt myself is that you have sata - so I am thinking you might have a sata CARD on an old pci MOBO.

i WOULD LIKE to hear if this works to solve the problemo.

I have a junky old spintel rig and it shares irq's too - and it is on the newer acpi standards with 24 irq's or like that.
The older mobos only had 16 irq's. so sharing is common. It was a sloppy standard; no conflicts, and yet so much sharing - but the devices that share are required to work. It used to be easy to assign irq's in win98. Now it's card shuffling and hope windoze can find it's a$$. But the best was the old mobos that you could map irq's at will - you needed the mobo manual, or support from website to do that tho.

anyway, maybe that helps - please advise.

My dear sweety has a really old AMD 800 mhz - I created serious irq sharing when I added a usb2 card - shuffled to fix that with only minor sharing - neat old rig that - it actually runs DOOM3 w an old geforce4 ti4200 card. gets a lil slowish in firefights tho.

peace
.


edit
sometimes there's an irq select for soundcard in the bios - but check all of the above, cos the irq shares will plague you until you rearrange cards - try to leave the slot close to the agp slot open - that was the old rule of thumb.

out
.

 

[ru_1980]

wow well let me say thanks for spending the time to write all that up. But I am going to check in to the IRQ's. It almost sounds like a conflict....it seems to be whenever the vid card has something to do the sound takes off. I am running windows XP BTW, lol and the MOBO isn't that old....ya it has SATA. The only cards I have are a wireless network adapter and the Video card in the AGP Alot.

I check it out and it seems the only 2 devices that are sharing an IRQ are the video card and the on board ethernet adapter (not the wireless one). I am going to try disabing the ethernet, seeing as I don't use it anyways(on the wireless card) and see if that clears things up! After that will try the new audio driver.

Thanks again for all the help. I'll let you know how it goes

 

[ru_1980]

OK it's fixed. It was the driver. Crappy thing is, this new driver from MSI doesn't have the ability to select 2,4,5.1 channels. The old driver did, which is why I was still on it...not to mention it had an equilizer. I hate it when features tend to disappear because something is old. I was wanting to use this computer to run my TV for movies and what not, but if the surround sound isn't going to be useful then what's the point. Bah well!

Well thanks again for all the help guys/gals...I guess I should have tried the new driver first before wastin your time with this, but it was odd because I was ALWAYS on the original driver and I figured if it was working, why change it, so I assumed there was some other dumb problem I don't know of; and that is why we come to the experts!

Thanks again guys

 

[ru_1980]

Best answer selected by ru_1980.