First, my specs, in case anyone needs the lowdown as to what I'm using to help them out:
Intel E8400
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
ASUS P5K-E
Corsair 750TX PSU
1X2GB Mushkin 996576, 1X2GB Mushkin 996603, both DDR2-800
GeForce 8800GT OC
Seagate 500GB SATA II
LITE DVD (IDE)
So now, on to the problem:
I built this computer around February and immediately overclocked it to 3.6ghz under a manual vcore setting and ever since then, I've been having problems with audio stutter and cpu spikage. I'm sure some of you are familiar with this problem.
Basically, whenever I'm scrolling down an internet page or minimizing/maximizing windows, or performing any type of task WITH the music playing, I get horrendous stuttering/distortion and a type of lag along with a massive spikage in CPU performance that seems to correspond with the stutter/distortion.
Sound familiar to some?
At first, I attributed it to a virus perhaps and so checked everything and when that didn't work, I reformatted the drive and reinstalled the OS. Nope, still there.
So I surfed forums and I found out a lot of people were experiencing problems with the Jmicron driver, and disabling it or switching the driver to the standard Intel one seemed to solve the trick. So I went and did the same thing and YES, it did work... for a while at least.
About 2 weeks passed before the problem came back after having to reboot Windows following some critical updates.
I then proceeded to do an assortment of different things:
1. Disable the IDE DVD drive, because perhaps, the IDE channel was causing a conflict with the SATA. Nope, didn't work.
2. Run tests on the memory sticks to see if they were faulty. Nope, fine. Changed the timings and upped the voltages. Nope, problem persisted.
Again, I surfed the forums and began to notice some people experiencing this problem in regards to their Nvidia drivers. Apparently, there's a possible conflict sometimes between the video and audio, where they begin sharing the same bus and resources, and thus the CPU begins to strain trying to send data to the two, thus leading to this problem.
So people suggested installing different sets of drivers and seeing what works. So away I went installing every possible Nvidia driver supporting the 8800GT that I could find. Nope, problem still persisted. Finally, while playing around, I rolled back the driver to the standard VGA adapter supplied by Windows and guess what? The problem disappeared.
So now I have a powerful, smooth running system and a video card that I can't put to use in any games or graphics apps because my driver doesn't recognize it. Obviously, I couldn't stick with this solution so I had to reinstall an Nvidia driver and of course, the problem came back.
So by now I was considering my options:
Maybe my motherboard was faulty. Maybe I needed to purchase an actual sound card and test it to see. Maybe I needed to buy another video card, perhaps the ATI HD4870. Maybe my PSU wasn't delivering clean power to the rest of my system.
And that was when it hit me. The voltage.
I went into the BIOS, set the E8400 back to stock and set the voltage on auto.
Poof. Problem gone. 1 week passed, still running smooth. But now I wanted my overclock back.
I overclocked again to 3.6ghz and left the voltage on auto this time, instead of adjusting it manually. Surprise! System still running smooth, although the voltage in CPU-Z shot up to 1.272, up from the manual setting of 1.248.
Currently, this is where I'm at. The system has been running smooth for a while but now I'm stuck with a voltage I don't want and every time I manually set the voltage a little lower, the system is absolutely stable under Orthos and everything, but that distortion/lag comes back. Under auto voltage, it disappears. The problem however, are the high temp readings under these auto voltages with 43 C at idle and 56 C at load.
So this is my question now:
What the heck is going on? Where do I go from here?
Sorry for the long post.
Intel E8400
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
ASUS P5K-E
Corsair 750TX PSU
1X2GB Mushkin 996576, 1X2GB Mushkin 996603, both DDR2-800
GeForce 8800GT OC
Seagate 500GB SATA II
LITE DVD (IDE)
So now, on to the problem:
I built this computer around February and immediately overclocked it to 3.6ghz under a manual vcore setting and ever since then, I've been having problems with audio stutter and cpu spikage. I'm sure some of you are familiar with this problem.
Basically, whenever I'm scrolling down an internet page or minimizing/maximizing windows, or performing any type of task WITH the music playing, I get horrendous stuttering/distortion and a type of lag along with a massive spikage in CPU performance that seems to correspond with the stutter/distortion.
Sound familiar to some?
At first, I attributed it to a virus perhaps and so checked everything and when that didn't work, I reformatted the drive and reinstalled the OS. Nope, still there.
So I surfed forums and I found out a lot of people were experiencing problems with the Jmicron driver, and disabling it or switching the driver to the standard Intel one seemed to solve the trick. So I went and did the same thing and YES, it did work... for a while at least.
About 2 weeks passed before the problem came back after having to reboot Windows following some critical updates.
I then proceeded to do an assortment of different things:
1. Disable the IDE DVD drive, because perhaps, the IDE channel was causing a conflict with the SATA. Nope, didn't work.
2. Run tests on the memory sticks to see if they were faulty. Nope, fine. Changed the timings and upped the voltages. Nope, problem persisted.
Again, I surfed the forums and began to notice some people experiencing this problem in regards to their Nvidia drivers. Apparently, there's a possible conflict sometimes between the video and audio, where they begin sharing the same bus and resources, and thus the CPU begins to strain trying to send data to the two, thus leading to this problem.
So people suggested installing different sets of drivers and seeing what works. So away I went installing every possible Nvidia driver supporting the 8800GT that I could find. Nope, problem still persisted. Finally, while playing around, I rolled back the driver to the standard VGA adapter supplied by Windows and guess what? The problem disappeared.
So now I have a powerful, smooth running system and a video card that I can't put to use in any games or graphics apps because my driver doesn't recognize it. Obviously, I couldn't stick with this solution so I had to reinstall an Nvidia driver and of course, the problem came back.
So by now I was considering my options:
Maybe my motherboard was faulty. Maybe I needed to purchase an actual sound card and test it to see. Maybe I needed to buy another video card, perhaps the ATI HD4870. Maybe my PSU wasn't delivering clean power to the rest of my system.
And that was when it hit me. The voltage.
I went into the BIOS, set the E8400 back to stock and set the voltage on auto.
Poof. Problem gone. 1 week passed, still running smooth. But now I wanted my overclock back.
I overclocked again to 3.6ghz and left the voltage on auto this time, instead of adjusting it manually. Surprise! System still running smooth, although the voltage in CPU-Z shot up to 1.272, up from the manual setting of 1.248.
Currently, this is where I'm at. The system has been running smooth for a while but now I'm stuck with a voltage I don't want and every time I manually set the voltage a little lower, the system is absolutely stable under Orthos and everything, but that distortion/lag comes back. Under auto voltage, it disappears. The problem however, are the high temp readings under these auto voltages with 43 C at idle and 56 C at load.
So this is my question now:
What the heck is going on? Where do I go from here?
Sorry for the long post.
Facebook
Twitter