Gigabyte 965P DS3 audio problem in Vista x64

[Nuclease]

Just built a DS3 (rev 3.3) system with Windows Vista home premium 64 bit. The onboard audio chip is Realtek ALC888. Loaded driver version 6.0.1.5392 and used in Stereo mode.

When I play music in iTunes or Windows Media Player etc while browsing internet, there's occasional "static" noise from the speakers. This only happens when I open new browser pages or scroll up and down within a browser. Headphones had the same results. It seems like other light load activities significantly affect the audio performance, which I didn't observe even in my older machine of Asus A7N8X-E NF2 onboard sound in windows XP.

Loaded a couple of older drivers and they had the same problem.

Any suggestions?

 

[Stumps]

Windows Update provides working Gigabyte drivers for realtek hardware in vista, they even have the Gigabyte logo's on them and allow use of the Gigabyte surround sound kits and other features on Gigabyte boards.

 

[Nuclease]

Well, the Vista default driver didn't seem to solve the problem.

I start to suspect the heat from the video card might be the cause. I am quite happy with the whole setup, except for the huge watts of 8800 GTS even at iddle.

In Lian Li PC-A05 case, the motherboard is placed up side down. The south bridge chip and the Realtek audio chip are just above (or just below, for a regular case) the two-slot video card heat sink. The south bridge actually feels hot by touch.

I am gonna try a better south bridge heatsink, and a PCI slot fan when they get here.

 

[vailr]

Try:
ftp://209.216.61.149/pc/audio/Vista_R166.zip
ftp://202.65.194.211/pc/audio/HDREADME.pdf

 

[Nuclease]

Thanks folks.

It turned out that the PCI-E link width was the problem. CPU-Z shows only x1 out of the possible x16 for the video interface. When I overclocked on DS3, somehow the PCI-E bus gets shrinked down.

After setting the default CPU speed, the bus came out as x16. The sound problem disappears, too.

 

[Danman]

Originally posted by: Nuclease
Thanks folks.

It turned out that the PCI-E link width was the problem. CPU-Z shows only x1 out of the possible x16 for the video interface. When I overclocked on DS3, somehow the PCI-E bus gets shrinked down.

After setting the default CPU speed, the bus came out as x16. The sound problem disappears, too.

Is there a setting in the BIOS For this?

I'm having the same EXACT problem as you are, and I wish I could fix this...

Anyone?