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Replacement for sblive 5.1

beatle

beatle

Diamond Member
I've about had it with my sblive 5.1. I'm sure it's having a field day screwing with my 686B southbridge, despite having the latest 4in1s and the latest live drivers. It refuses to play DVD audio clearly, and moving windows on my 2nd monitor (PCI video card) causes static as well. I need spdif output with AC3 passthrough via a coax output. My old desktop theater doesn't have optical input or discrete inputs. Please, no breakout boxes... I need all the desk space I can get.
 
I replaced my live 5.1 with a Hercules game theater xp a while ago. It took a couple of driver releases, but the current drivers (and 4.10's) are very stable. It has just about every imaginable input and output on the box, including coax digital inputs and outputs.
 
Does the audigy have the same problems that the live does with the 686B southbridge? I'd PREFER not to buy another Creative product, as their support is horrible.

I really don't want to drop $100+ on a motherboard I'd be replacing in less than a year.
 
Audigy does have drivers issues. Inlcuding crashing on all SMP systems, even P4 with HT.

As far as nforce boards go, newegg has Asus A7N266-VM for $73 shipped. That's cheaper than one Audigy. Inlc 5.1 audio, GF2MX, eth, 4 USB, etc.
 
Does the audio on that NForce board support AC3 passthrough? This was my main reason for getting a new soundcard. Static playing mp3s is all but nil now, but DVD audio is ridiculous. PowerDVD 3.0 and 4.0 XP has several skips (even when playing a ripped dvd on the harddrive) and WinDVD 4.0 just stops playing altogether after about 3/4 of a second set to output through the spdif port.
 
Originally posted by: tart666
Audigy does have drivers issues. Inlcuding crashing on all SMP systems, even P4 with HT.

As far as nforce boards go, newegg has Asus A7N266-VM for $73 shipped. That's cheaper than one Audigy. Inlc 5.1 audio, GF2MX, eth, 4 USB, etc.
Click to expand...

do the Live 5.1 series work ok on HT enabled machines?
 
I don't know about passthrough, but nforce seems to have much better CPU utilization. Like 3% vs. Creative 30% on 5.1 encoding. That might account for fewer dropouts. And the nice nvidia drivers, of course.

As far as SMP issues, I think they are limited to Audigy. Funny enough, some people report SMP problems go away if AC3 passthrough is disabled.
 
Originally posted by: tart666


As far as SMP issues, I think they are limited to Audigy. Funny enough, some people report SMP problems go away if AC3 passthrough is disabled.
Click to expand...


I had SMP problems with my live value and dual celerons that were never really resolved. Mainly skipping while playing back video clips.

It sounds trivial, but it's extremely annoying and even more so when you consider I've owned the card for 3-4 years and the drivers were never fixed in that time.

At 2cpu.com, I saw a couple guys basically cheering the SB problems on hyperthreaded systems because it brings these 4+ year old problems into the mainstream. Now creative has to get off their lazy asses and fix their sh*t. :|:frown:
 
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