What's the deal with X-Fi and NVidia video cards?

[RebateMonger]

A friend bought a Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer sound card. He also has an NVidia 7600GS video card. The OS is XP Professional.

He immediately lost the ability to load drivers for the NVidia 7600GS. Windows Device Manager reports "Not enough free resources". As soon as he pulls the X-Fi card, everything works fine again. The RealTek onboard sound, when enabled, works fine with the NVidia 7600GS. So did his Creative Audigy 2, but that card recently failed.

Here's a description of this (not uncommon) problem.

I looked over the IRQ/IO/Memory resources for each of the two cards, and see no conflicts. I also tried moving the X-Fi card slot and telling the BIOS (Abit AI7 motherboard, running Intel 865 chipset) to manually set the PCI Interrupt for the sound card slot. No go.

The Abit AI7 has the most recent BIOS available (Version 19 from 2004). I've read that this problem was often fixed with BIOS upgrades on various motherboards, but no chance here. The NVidia driver is the latest version, also. It works fine until we insert the sound card.

Is there a universal fix for this (known) problem?

Thanks,
RebateMonger

 

[ViRGE]

I hear about this problem every now and then (I don't experience it myself) and have not heard of any sort of universal fix. Have you checked Creative's forums?

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
I hear about this problem every now and then (I don't experience it myself) and have not heard of any sort of universal fix. Have you checked Creative's forums?

I did a rudimentary search of both NVidia's and Creative's forums, but I might have missed something. I'll probably have to spend more time there. Actually, I'm trying to talk the friend into just using the onboard sound.

I found a link elsewhere that said that Creative Support has suggested changing the AGP Aperature from 128MB to 256MB. This is, obviously, only useful for an AGP card, which this one is. My friend hasn't tried this one yet.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
I'm trying to talk the friend into just using the onboard sound.

Well, there goes my suggestion! At least here's a sympathy bump for you .

 

[Pelu]

Hm... more X-FI and nvidia cards problems....

Sounds like Creative conspire with ATI againt nvidia.....

 

[Roguestar]

Yeah... or not.

 

[AmberClad]

Yeah, that's really not a typical experience. I have cards from Creative, Nvidia, and DAAMIT in my machine, without any compatibility issues. And I'm sure countless others are using some combination of an X-FI and Nvidia card, so let's not get into conspiracy theories...

 

[Brian48]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
A friend bought a Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer sound card. He also has an NVidia 7600GS video card. The OS is XP Professional.

He immediately lost the ability to load drivers for the NVidia 7600GS. Windows Device Manager reports "Not enough free resources". As soon as he pulls the X-Fi card, everything works fine again. The RealTek onboard sound, when enabled, works fine with the NVidia 7600GS. So did his Creative Audigy 2, but that card recently failed.

Here's a description of this (not uncommon) problem.

I looked over the IRQ/IO/Memory resources for each of the two cards, and see no conflicts. I also tried moving the X-Fi card slot and telling the BIOS (Abit AI7 motherboard, running Intel 865 chipset) to manually set the PCI Interrupt for the sound card slot. No go.

The Abit AI7 has the most recent BIOS available (Version 19 from 2004). I've read that this problem was often fixed with BIOS upgrades on various motherboards, but no chance here. The NVidia driver is the latest version, also. It works fine until we insert the sound card.

Is there a universal fix for this (known) problem?

Thanks,
RebateMonger

Are you sure this is the XtremeGamer and not the older XtremeMusic (not to be confused with XtremeAudio)?