My SOUND CARD!?!?!

Ticky

Senior member
Feb 7, 2008
436
0
0
So, I upgrade my ram and my video card. Everything seems peachy. 3D Mark runs fine, so I try to play TF2. Freeze and BSOD after 20 seconds. Hmm. Try another game. BSOD after 5 seconds. WTF? So I reinstall drivers, no dice. Run 10 hours of Memtest. Zero errors. Try everything I can think of. Then, it occurs to me. What's different about 3d Mark? There's no sound!!! So I disable my sound card, and suddenly TF2 plays perfectly. Enable it, and CRASH BSOD. Lovely.


So I ask, WTF did I do to my sound card while I was upgrading my other hardware? Random failure? I didn't even touch it....
 

Ticky

Senior member
Feb 7, 2008
436
0
0
No, it's an Audigy 2. I'm going to reinstall the driver on the off chance that'll work. I'll swap it's slot after that. So lame...
 

Denithor

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
6,298
23
81
Depending on your motherboard, just use the onboard sound. If it's HD audio you probably won't be able to tell any difference versus the Audigy 2. This counts double if you're running Vista as Creative's drivers for Vista totally suck.
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
167
106
You went to 4GB of RAM I'm guessing? Get the latest drivers, Creative's older drivers had 4GB issues.
 

dclive

Elite Member
Oct 23, 2003
5,626
2
81
Originally posted by: Ticky
So, I upgrade my ram and my video card. Everything seems peachy. 3D Mark runs fine, so I try to play TF2. Freeze and BSOD after 20 seconds. Hmm. Try another game. BSOD after 5 seconds. WTF? So I reinstall drivers, no dice. Run 10 hours of Memtest. Zero errors. Try everything I can think of. Then, it occurs to me. What's different about 3d Mark? There's no sound!!! So I disable my sound card, and suddenly TF2 plays perfectly. Enable it, and CRASH BSOD. Lovely.


So I ask, WTF did I do to my sound card while I was upgrading my other hardware? Random failure? I didn't even touch it....

See my .sig and post the output of the results of !analyze -v so we can view it.
 

shingletingle

Senior member
Jun 30, 2007
976
1
0
Originally posted by: Denithor
Depending on your motherboard, just use the onboard sound. If it's HD audio you probably won't be able to tell any difference versus the Audigy 2. This counts double if you're running Vista as Creative's drivers for Vista totally suck.

The "Creative drivers for Vista" suck comment is old, tired and untrue. I have an X-Fi XtremeMusic and have not encountered any troubles with their drivers.
 

CKent

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
9,020
0
0
Originally posted by: shingletingle
Originally posted by: Denithor
Depending on your motherboard, just use the onboard sound. If it's HD audio you probably won't be able to tell any difference versus the Audigy 2. This counts double if you're running Vista as Creative's drivers for Vista totally suck.

The "Creative drivers for Vista" suck comment is old, tired and untrue. I have an X-Fi XtremeMusic and have not encountered any troubles with their drivers.

OP doesn't have an x-fi, he has an audigy 2. The A2 drivers have always sucked, but each release has gotten worse. The last driver release for the card consisted of Creative employees defecating on a keyboard, compiling it, hosting it for download and announcing the end of their support for the card.

OP, I'd suggest either using onboard sound, or dropping a few bucks on a quality sound card. Meaning, something not made by Creative. I just picked up a Xonar DX to replace my audigy 2 and the sound quality is amazing.
 

mazeroth

Golden Member
Jan 31, 2006
1,821
2
81
Do the drivers for the original Audigy suck in Vista? I have an Audigy Platinum EX and was thinking of giving Vista a go.
 

ViRGE

Elite Member, Moderator Emeritus
Oct 9, 1999
31,516
167
106
Originally posted by: mazeroth
Do the drivers for the original Audigy suck in Vista? I have an Audigy Platinum EX and was thinking of giving Vista a go.
If they're anything like the X-Fi drivers, they should be fine. I'm not sure what's going on with Ticky's sound card.