A8N-SLI - is it really this bad?

[steamnputer]

Originally posted by: BikeDude
Try this tool: http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=951 Maybe increasing the PCI clock cycles for the sound card will keep it from stalling? (I have no doubts that the sound card device driver is of poor quality -- there are only a handful of good device driver developers out there, I'm surprised XP run as well as it usually does)

--
Rune

what sound card??

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Sound chip, sound card, whatever...; The thing that makes your computer go bleep in the night.

Even when located directly on your motherboard, chances are good the thing still hangs off your PCI bus.

--
Rune

 

[Speedo]

Ok guys, I have been running many sessions without any problems now, so I can finally draw the conclusion that the problem is solved! Actually I did have a "dream scenario", with so many similar machines to test on. I should have seen the connection between TS and gaming sooner, but since that was never a problem on my old setup...
Luckily, I don't have to get rid of TS completely, just change the driver to use "wave" instead of "directsound".

What I've learned from this mess:
* The audio drivers for the built in soundcard is buggy
* The Seasonic 400w, Antec Truepower 380 PSU is fine for this mobo (atleast in a non SLI setup)
* No need to change from the 1004 bios yet
* Disabling PEG and setting PCI Express bus to 101MHz when overclocking is probably a good idea. (although they didn't cause any apparent problems in this case)
* No problems with the nVidia LAN, atleast for me (with the latest drivers)


I really appreciate all the help/tips I've got in these forums and especially this thread. It really shows the power of the community!

I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone, especially these members who put quite some time in trying to help me solve the problem:
steamnputer, BikeDude, FastEddie, sep, housecat, GuitarDaddy, Big, Bunny, Xed, rockstar
-I really appreciate your efforts!

The system seems very stable and fast now, and overclocking nicely as well. (3200+ @ 2.53Ghz).

Also I want to appologize for the quite provocative topic, but I felt rather frustrated at the time.

Seeyou all in the forums...

 

[imported_BikeDude]

I hate to be a stick in the mud, but... If a piece of software is able to cause a system freeze (CTRL+ALT+DEL non-responsive -- right?), then that is a very serious issue. A workaround is fine and dandy, but only as an intermediate step to fixing the real problem...

After all, both WinXP and device drivers are supposed to be bulletproof. There are no acceptable exceptions to this rule. (bugs happen of course, but they should be hunted down asap)

You should urge Asus to attempt to reproduce the problem. They should be able to single out the culprit (and no, that culprit isn't TS -- unless TS runs in ring 0).

 

[Speedo]

BikeDude: Yes, I agree with you. Workarounds never feels fully satisfying, but when using new hardware(drivers) I guess we have to accept some hickups here and there?
The computer did not freeze completely, but it would take like 10 minutes to get to the desktop and kill the application.

However, what worse is that this problem is not isolated to TeamSpeak and UT2k4. A guy at the local computer store (which I have known privately for quite some time) told me that he had the same problem, but that was with WoW and Ventrilo. Since he had done the passive chipset cooling mod (without additional cooling, which I have) he had just assumed that he got those freezes because his chipset was overheated. Now, this Ventrilo program apparently only uses directsound, and can not be set to wave, so the workaround does not work in that case.

This also tells me that there must be many online players out there (which uses TS, Ventrilo, or similar programs to communicate while playing) which are getting headaces about freezes, but probably have no idea of what's going on.

So who's to blame? Who should "fix" the problem?
Well, Asus uses the Realtek ALC850. Who make the drivers? I think they where installed with the nForce driver package. (It sais NVIDIA nForce Audio Codec Interface" in the devicemanager). So are Realtek or nVidia developing the drivers?

Furthermore, isn't this Realtek ALC850 used in most other nForce4 based motherboards as well (Like DFI, Gigabyte)? In that case, the problem must exist there also.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: Speedo
So who's to blame? Who should "fix" the problem?
Well, Asus uses the Realtek ALC850. Who make the drivers?

I think it boils down to Asus. If their motherboard behaves differently than the majority of motherboards out there, then it becomes their responsibility to find out exactly why that is.

But the freeze is iffy. I prefer a good honest BSOD -- atleast then you can eliminate a lot of the software (and concentrate on faulty hardware and dodgy drivers).

 

[Speedo]

Yepp. But really, who develops the drivers for the integrated sound?

Also, it's a mystery that we aren't seeing more repports of this problem.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

It's probably Realtek. Check the Device Manager, select the audio device, properties and then check driver details.

As for other users, I think you'll be surprised at how resistant people are against problems. It's much easier to ignore a squeaky wheel than search around for oil or fill out countless forms in an attempt to report the problem to someone. (after all: Have _you_ bothered reporting this issue to Asus yet? )

 

[Speedo]

I find no sign of Realtek in the device manager.

No, I haven't repported the problem to Asus yet, because of two reasons. First I want to be sure they are to blame for the problem. Therefore I created this other thread:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=29&threadid=1561458&enterthread=y
I would like to see a few others confirming this problem.

Seccondly I've had bad experiences of repporting problems in the past. The response is usually very poor, if there is any at all.

 

[steamnputer]

I am glad you found it.....

Speedo there are two seperate sound "systems" you can install on the a8n. One is the ASUS version(realtek has there name on it also) which I use and the other is the nvidia (nforce audio codecs)version which I had problems with right after i installed them, would hang and reboot that sort of thing although I had them both in at the same time as I did not know what I was installing on the driver disk.

you should have one or the other in my opionion the realtek-asus one works better. The Asus realtek manager has a tray icon that looks like a ringing ball, and there is a realtek sound manager in the start menu.


steamnputer