Creative finally admits that the SBlive causes problems with VIA motherboards

[GL]

Viahardware.com's forums have been looking into this for a while. I've recently found a problem with my SBlive, VIA mobo, and ATI Radeon doing video captures. If any of you have experienced some problems, you should probably post in this thread which I believe is being monitored by some VIA staff and Creative staff.

-GL

 

[bigbootydaddy]

yes, i was excited to hear about this, i can confirm, the problem even exists on p3 and not just amd systems.

i posted my post yesterday.

 

[Pakman]

I really don't think it's SB's problem but more of a VIA problem since the SBLive card has been out for so long and haven't caused any problems until the recently released VIA 686A or B chipset. If we're gonna blame someone and have a recall, I think all the weight should fall on VIA. This is definetly a problem that needs to be addressed which is reproducable on alot of peoples machines... including mine.

 

[GL]

The problem has been around for 2 years though and is cropping up on Intel i815 boards too. I don't claim to be an expert but from reading some of the posts on the viahardware.com board, a lot of those guys are EEs or something and say the SBLive hogs the PCI bus and doesn't share it with other devices properly. I think the BX chipset was just a heck of a chipset really! The problematic devices are starting to show, now that we've moved past this workhorse

-GL

 

[Davegod75]

this is good to hear. maybe something will get fixed

 

[ToBeMe]

815's? How many & Where? I personally have 3 here and know of about 28 more.......I haven't witnessed any problems with the SBL's on 815's in fact I just replaced an AE that had problems on an 815 with an MP3+ and all the problems went away! Could be possible though I guess......what are the problem signs on the 815's?

 

[NFS4]

Now that I think of it, some of my lockups/reboots could have been caused by the Live!

 

[RagingGuardian]

WTF, after reading the posts I realize that I have some of the same problems which I was assuming was due to my KK266. I get system hangs and have to hard reboot when I'm transfering large files. I never thought that it had anything to do with my SB Live. Time to take this sucker to the FS Forum

 

[Consultant]

Ive been running a SB Live value on an Epox EP7KXA for a year now with no problems to speak of.

 

[V]

My friend has no problems at all. He has a KT7A-RAID.

 

[Rifter]

I have no problems whatsoever, i have a MSI K7T Pro2-a.

 

[MCS]

I had this problem on a KT7A-RAID, but solved it by putting my hard drives on the Highpoint controller and having the CD-ROMs on IDE 1/2.

The other solution was to Disable DMA on the CD-ROMs. Either that or yank out the SB Live completely.

 

[*kjm]

A lot of the problems happen on the ALI MAGiK 1 chipset too.

 

[CQuinn]

I started having transfer problems after moving my drives to the Highpoint controller
on my KT7-RAID. A low-level format on the problem partition seems to have
solved that. But there is also a note in the KT7 FAQ on this issue.
So right now I am careful not to try too many transfer requests from
one drive to another at once.

I noticed (and this seems to be comfirmed in some SB Live discussion groups),
that the sound out from my SB Live is less than was coming from my old
AWE64.

Otherwise, on a fresh install I have had no real problems with the card.

 

[Thyme]

I had big problems until I disabled ACPI and installed the new VIA 4-in-1

 

[GL]

I also thought I had no problems. But do any of you ever hear a loud pop from your speakers every so often? I had written this off as nothing much, but it's actually caused by the latency issues around the SBLive (let me add it seems to be prominent in the Value line). I also have issues when capturing video with my ATI AIW Radeon although I sorted it out and it seems it can be fixed in software.

And for any of you running Winamp in directsound mode, do you ever get awkward behaviour (i.e. static sound after a spike in CPU utilization)? This too is a result of this issue.

Just interested in knowing if anybody hears those pops though (especially when entering Windows). Because previous to my owning an AIW Radeon I was of the opinion that my SBlive worked perfectly too (despite having this popping issue).

-GL

 

[dcdomain]

I don't really have any problems with my MSI K7T Pro2-a either. Running a Platinum 5.1. Of course I don't have any of the crap software installed. Drivers only... did anyone hack the remote control yet? It's still wrapped up in the box.

 

[StormRider]

This doesn't make sense. If the SB Live is truly hogging the bus then it would cause problems for other PCI devices and the SB Live shouldn't be having any problems.

Let me elaborate. Say the SB Live needs to access the PCI bus every 50 ms to grab data from memory and produce sound through its DACs. If it hogs the bus (i.e. it controls the bus) then it won't have any problems gaining access to the bus to produce non-distorted sound.

However, let's say another device is hogging the PCI bus (therefore controlling it). When the SB Live needs access to it then it would be forced to wait (since the other device is hogging the bus) and this could cause pops and static.

So, it seems to me it's some other devices fault -- not the SB Live.

Also, I have a MX300 and I've experienced minor pops on my Via chipset motherboard (Tyan S1598C2). So, if I had to blame someone, I would be more inclined to blame Via.

Actually, in reality, it's probably not fair to blame any one individual. There are too many variables -- it could be a particular motherboard's fault, it could be a particular motherboard chipset, it could be some other PCI device, it could be a bios problem, it could be bad drivers etc.

 

[loosbrew]

i think the problems lay in the fact that some SBL's dont like to share the bus. especially with acpi enabled, for some reason SBL's will try and share with another device and cause some type of KMODE_EXCEPTION, or IRQ_NOT_LESS error. happened to me numerous times, and i thinks it might be one of those some work some dont issues. damn creative.

loosbrew

 

[AL77]

Well, I built a system for a friend utilizing the Asus p3v4x (apollo pro 133a chipset with the 596B south bridge), a SB Live Value (the one with the digital out), and a Voodoo 3 PCI about a year ago, and I haven't seen any problems that are mentioned. Has everyone dedicated an IRQ to the SB Live?

BTW, I once had the Voodoo3 and Live sharing the same IRQ. I had enabled a com port that had been previously been disabled and all the IRQ assignments went to hell. It was actually like this for a few weeks before I realized it one day at my friend's place when the system crashed playing a Warcraft3 movie trailer. I then isolated the IRQs for video and sound and have had no problems since. Also, I have never tinkered with the PCI latency timer.

 

[ToBeMe]

Where are the 815 problems as mentioned above???? I looked through all the posts on the other site and found no mention........as for the via problems.....I also have two KT7-RAID boards here and have SBL Value cards in them with Klipish speakers......no "Crackling" or "Popping" problems at all and these are my two boys's gaming rigs.........seems some people have a bunch of problems and others have none..... I did try an AE just for S's & G's and had all sorts of 2K problems....... Think I might try a Turtle Beach too just to see what they're like since it's been a long time since I had one but to be honest, I have not had any SBL problems to date.....(knocks on wood franticly!)

 

[AnMig]

Another Ex sblive x gamer user here.
ditched sb live a week ago nomore blue screenssince then, tried to resolve the issue with driver and pci irq sharing . but finally gave up and sold it to a friend. Currently using my MB sound KK266 and waiting for my turtle beach santa cruz. I took it as a personal failure that I was not able to make it work in this new board. It worked fine with my old msi pro2-a

 

[BaseGrizzly]

I didn't have any problems with the SB Live! with my Asus A7V, but I couldn't run it on the Abit KT7A with the exact same components. It would crash on almost half of the startups on my computer. I was sick of the poor effects of EAX, the memory hogging drivers, and the numerous problems, so I just gave it to a friend. I can say that my Aureal Vortex2 sounds much better after yanking it out of my old computer and putting it into mine. Glad I got rid of the piece of trash.

 

[Thyme]

I haven't seen anything about the remote being hacked yet. I'm waiting and hoping though.