Has anyone gotten a KT266A stable with an Audigy?

[BlueEyedBeezlebub]

I have a gigabyte 7vtxe, 2 sticks of 256mb ddr crucial pc2100, sb audigy oem, hauppauge wintv tuner, geforce 3, xp1700+.

Have the latest 4in1s, latest audigy drivers and i get reboots in windows xp telling me sometimes theres a driver problem (suspect audigy) and sometimes a unrecoverable hardware error thats by design such as system cache errors or other such problems (which i blame on via).

I ordered a new hd, a special edition wd 80gb 8mb buffer and am going to reformat again, I was going to try no 4in1s, latest audigy drivers, latest nvidia and leave it be.. hope it works ok and if it doesnt try the 4in1s.. if that doesnt work reformat, pull out the audigy, then again dont do the 4in1s, see if that works, then if it doesnt put the 4in1s on again.. if that doesnt work throw this POS amd system out the window(s) (haha) and buy all intel sheit.

Um please help, I'm sick and tired of this system and I should donate it to someone I hate.

Thanks in advance

 

[blackhawk]

Didn't know there was a problem with this setup!

My Epox 8kha+ has been running my audigy for over a year no problems.

I suspect something else but check at amdforums.com for more mb specific info.

 

[Bartman39]

Um please help, I'm sick and tired of this system and I should donate it to someone I hate.

I`ll pay the cost of shipping and you can hate me for free...!


BTW have you tried different slots for the sound card...? Oh just noticed the TV tuner in the mix... Try it without the TV tuner (seem to remember a resource conflict issue with these 2 cards...?)

 

[Mem]

Has anyone gotten a KT266A stable with an Audigy?

I`m another person that has the Audigy and Epox 8KHA+ with no problems,all I did was disabled the onboard sound,disabled midi and game port address in Bios,and put the Audigy in a PCI slot that does not share IRQ with another slot(PCI slot 2 on Epox 8KHA+),clean install of sound drivers(no previous sound drivers on the OS) reboot and get the updates and then all done.

 

[gc444]

I too have been running great for about a year now on my setup. I have a Shuttle AK35GTR with an Audigy OEM card. I am running under Windows 2K and no problems at all like this. Making sure all the onboard stuff was disabled was the only thing special I did.

 

[BlueEyedBeezlebub]

ok i took out my old 56k 3com gaming modem and the wintv tuner, and go the audigy on its own irq (5), but it still shares the firewire port with my usb stuff but hopefully this won't make the computer unstable. I don't use the firewire anyway and I suppose I could disable it.

also awhile back i turned off APIC in favor of pic mode, someone told me that some via chipsets dont handle apic properly, can anyone confirm this?

i also already had the midi and gameport addresses disabled prior.

ive had this setup for a while now and pretty satisfied with the speed but how does a kt266a and 1700+ hold up to the current stuff?
I thought that the kt333 wasnt a big performance increase and kt400 if its out didnt catch my eye either. I have assumed that anything kt266a or newer is pretty much considered current as far as performance goes?

*update* Seems to be working much better now, I can play music and get on the internet without a reboot every 10-15 minutes. I really didnt want to have to dump any more money in computer stuff besides maybe a video card for a while!

 

[Peter]

Leave the IRQs alone, sharing is alright among PCI and AGP cards. If the board offers using the APIC, do so, it's faster. The chipset does that correctly, only bad BIOSes can screw this up (but then again, the same is true for legacy PIC mode ...)

Don't waste your time with all this, rather wait until Creative finally get their driver quality sorted. Don't hold your breath though.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: BlueEyedBeezlebub
ok i took out my old 56k 3com gaming modem and the wintv tuner, and go the audigy on its own irq (5), but it still shares the firewire port with my usb stuff but hopefully this won't make the computer unstable. I don't use the firewire anyway and I suppose I could disable it.

also awhile back i turned off APIC in favor of pic mode, someone told me that some via chipsets dont handle apic properly, can anyone confirm this?

i also already had the midi and gameport addresses disabled prior.

ive had this setup for a while now and pretty satisfied with the speed but how does a kt266a and 1700+ hold up to the current stuff?
I thought that the kt333 wasnt a big performance increase and kt400 if its out didnt catch my eye either. I have assumed that anything kt266a or newer is pretty much considered current as far as performance goes?

*update* Seems to be working much better now, I can play music and get on the internet without a reboot every 10-15 minutes. I really didnt want to have to dump any more money in computer stuff besides maybe a video card for a while!

Disable anything you don't need
i always disable my serial ports and parallel ports because they do nothing for me.. save some resources.
are you running NO 4in1 drivers? if so, that's kinda surprising.. normally those are needed for a good stable operation.

 

[RanDum72]

Go under 'Control Panel', then 'Sounds and Audio Devices'. Look what kind of sound device is there. If its 'EMU10k' or something like that instead of 'Audigy Sound Device', the your card is screwed. KT266A based boards are known to corrupt the firmware of the Audigy, especially with Abit and MSI boards. The only KT266A board I used that didn't have this problem is the Epox 8KHA+ but there may be others as well.

 

[vicvon]

I had an Abit KR7A-133 raid board and an Audigy. Worked just fine for me, never had any problems at all.

It did say EMU 10k or something to that effect.

 

[BlueEyedBeezlebub]

it says SB Audigy Audio E800, this system has been up all day with mp3s and videos playing constantly and no auto reboots... i think the audigy is just really picky, needs its own irq and as many resources as possible that you can free up with one the better.. must be..

if it keeps this up I'm not going to upgrade for another 2-3 years because im not a big gamer and if i want faster games i can just put in a radeon 9700.

If it said emu101k wouldnt that be a driver messup (wrong creative or outdated creative drivers?).. becasue i've seen that before myself but i'm running the certified microsoft 8/24 ones.

 

[Davegod]

I've an audigy gamer/player stuck in my kt266a (a Gigabyte 7vtxh, near same as yours, incidentally originally with 2 sticks of crucial 256mb pc2100 [now 3]; a xp1600+ and gf3ti200) and had a world of problems when using w98se , but i'm ok on winXP pro (which i had to do wince audigy wouldnt work at all on '98). I do still occasionally get sound loop in games but XP kicks in and terminates the game so i can reload it straight away Dont bother with the 4in1's, the ones XP come with are fine, for me anyway.

Mind you, i suspected on w98 it was some firewire/usb conflict, and since I've no use for it anyway, and dislike USB on general principle, i disabled the usb at the same time as i upgraded to xp. I also noticed upon installing audigy drivers it then gave some error about 'couldnt install some audigy driver with usb somewhere in the name'. Creative swear blind the audigy driver has nothing USB in it

NB: if you have an audigy with recent driver go into msconfig and disable CTHELPER from starting up. It does nothing (no, it doesnt add compatibility with WinDVD, both my WinDVD and PowerDVD work fine without it) except frequently chew 100% cpu. I also considered removing "JET DETECT" but no idea wtf thats for and no problems so left it.

 

[RanDum72]

If it said emu101k wouldnt that be a driver messup (wrong creative or outdated creative drivers?).. becasue i've seen that before myself but i'm running the certified microsoft 8/24 ones.

Believe me, if you have installed the drivers from the CD and then it comes up as 'EMU10K', that means you cannot update to the latest drivers. It may still run but 4 channel sound is really flaky and you may get errors. I've had two Audigy's die this way with my KR7A-133. The ACPI implementation will corrupt the firmware. I've heard there are newer versions of the Audigy (not Audigy2) that has an extra resistor that prevents this but this has never been confirmed 100%. The Audigy and Abit KR7A (and other KT266A boards with the exception of the epox 8KHA+) is a bad combo, IMO.

It did say EMU 10k or something to that effect.

Have you tried updating the drivers?

 

[BlueEyedBeezlebub]

would a turtle beach santa cruz be a better choice?

doing what i posted fixed the 10minute reboot problem but i still have a 2-3 hr reboot problem... so tonight i'm pulling the audigy, using onboard until i get a crash if any.. if that fixes it i'll order a santa cruz.. cuz im not in the mood to upgrade my mobo or buy a whole new intel cpu/mobo to fix it.

 

[RanDum72]

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz has no problems at all with the KT266A. In fact, thats the soundcard I eventually used with my KR7A (pulled it from my other PC and swapped the Audigy with it).

 

[BlueEyedBeezlebub]

yeah im 'stress testing' it right now.. mp3s playing, instant messengers going, onboard via sound blaring queens of the stone age and internet explorer shields up! and waiting for a reboot.. if i get one i'm getting a nforce 2 no doubt.. if i dont i'll probably get myself a TBSC!

I'm almost positive that the problem is 50/50 (creative/via) but I know that via is crap from experience and I haven't heard audigys having problems on intel motherboards (at least it was resolvable unlike my situation like making sure all drivers were microsoft certified in device manager).

But I'm still sticking with this motherboard even the audigy would work with an intel setup because I like the performance of the kt266a+ chipsets and creative has a long history of poor driver support regardless.

many have told me that the sound positioning and overall warmth of the sound of the tbsc is better than audigys.. is this true?

 

[Peter]

MS "approved" drivers means nothing to their workingness. It just means they don't break the operating system. Big difference there.

And yet again, VIA's chipsets are alright to begin with ... it's just that card and driver bugs never show on all platforms. Creative has had plenty of cards and drivers that work on Intel chipsets and CPUs and don't do so elsewhere. Making you believe those were CPU and/or chipset bugs is just the kind of FUD the big guys have always been spinning to scare you away from their competitors.

 

[BlueEyedBeezlebub]

it still rebooted with the audigy out overnight. the error xp reported was device driver error.. but the only pci/agp devices are my linksys nic and gf3. I think I had the audigy working before when I put it on irq5 by itself. Now I'm updating to the latest nvidia drivers and 4in1s (which were on before).. if this doesnt work then I'll probably blow the system away and reinstall xp w/o 4in1s or buy myself a nforce 2

 

[KGB1]

Originally posted by: BlueEyedBeezlebub
it still rebooted with the audigy out overnight. the error xp reported was device driver error.. but the only pci/agp devices are my linksys nic and gf3. I think I had the audigy working before when I put it on irq5 by itself. Now I'm updating to the latest nvidia drivers and 4in1s (which were on before).. if this doesnt work then I'll probably blow the system away and reinstall xp w/o 4in1s or buy myself a nforce 2

Get a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. MUCH better card, lower CPU utilization better SOUND and no crackling. NO VIA worries.