Hey people! So I finally bought an Audigy on OEM from NewEgg. I am experiencing some slight problems with both Audigy and Radeon 8500 (Retail, also boguht from NewEgg earlier). Anyway, I hope someone can give me some insight into these problems:
1) Audigy: When I try to turn on "Enable SPDIF" in WinDVD or PowerDVD, the signal is weak and choppy. I made sure the "AC-3 decoding" is turned on in the Audigy Speaker control panel. I remember my SB Live! 5.1's AC-3 Decoding produced very strong and smooth signal, so I am not sure why Audigy's AC-3 decoding is so bad. Is it a driver problem or is it because my Audigy is OEM? Also, although my speakers aren't fancy or anything, I do notice that the Audigy's tonal quality is very different from the Live!; the bass seems weaker while the midrange seem stronger. The treble... not sure, but I think it's not as strong as Live! in the very high frequencies. Anyone noticed these differences?
2) Radeon 8500: After a bad experience with the Radeon 8500 OEM version (bad core; rendering artifacts in 3D and defective DVD hardware-accelerated playback), I returned it and bought a retail version from NewEgg. But although the retail performs perfectly in games, it does possess a same problem as the bad OEM one I received before: There are graphical glitches in the Overlay. It's not as bad as the OEM, on which the Overlay (i.e. DVD movie) looked like 16-bit color. But there are glitches between color ranges (especially brighter tones). This problem ONLY EXIST if the "Gamma" is set to 1 or above in the "Overlay" tab of the ATI display control panel. If I turn the Gamma to 0, everything looks perfect, with image quality identical to that of my old Viper II (which, though had a bad reputation with gamers, was very very good with DVD playback). I can also adjust the brightness/contrast/hue controls without producing any glitches. But adjusting the gamma always produce these glitches, I do not know why. It is probably a problem with the Rage Theatre chip at magnifying the original signal; I am only unsure whether or not the problem is in the hardware or if there's a problem with the driver (I am using the new driver that has SMOOTHVISION enabled and it's not WHQL certified)?
1) Audigy: When I try to turn on "Enable SPDIF" in WinDVD or PowerDVD, the signal is weak and choppy. I made sure the "AC-3 decoding" is turned on in the Audigy Speaker control panel. I remember my SB Live! 5.1's AC-3 Decoding produced very strong and smooth signal, so I am not sure why Audigy's AC-3 decoding is so bad. Is it a driver problem or is it because my Audigy is OEM? Also, although my speakers aren't fancy or anything, I do notice that the Audigy's tonal quality is very different from the Live!; the bass seems weaker while the midrange seem stronger. The treble... not sure, but I think it's not as strong as Live! in the very high frequencies. Anyone noticed these differences?
2) Radeon 8500: After a bad experience with the Radeon 8500 OEM version (bad core; rendering artifacts in 3D and defective DVD hardware-accelerated playback), I returned it and bought a retail version from NewEgg. But although the retail performs perfectly in games, it does possess a same problem as the bad OEM one I received before: There are graphical glitches in the Overlay. It's not as bad as the OEM, on which the Overlay (i.e. DVD movie) looked like 16-bit color. But there are glitches between color ranges (especially brighter tones). This problem ONLY EXIST if the "Gamma" is set to 1 or above in the "Overlay" tab of the ATI display control panel. If I turn the Gamma to 0, everything looks perfect, with image quality identical to that of my old Viper II (which, though had a bad reputation with gamers, was very very good with DVD playback). I can also adjust the brightness/contrast/hue controls without producing any glitches. But adjusting the gamma always produce these glitches, I do not know why. It is probably a problem with the Rage Theatre chip at magnifying the original signal; I am only unsure whether or not the problem is in the hardware or if there's a problem with the driver (I am using the new driver that has SMOOTHVISION enabled and it's not WHQL certified)?
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