SB Live and Unreal Engine Games

[pmistry 0]

Deus Ex, Unreal Gold, and Unreal Tournament, all of these games run with very distorted/crackling sound under Windows XP Pro for me, this happens 9 times out of 10. What I don't understand is how sometimes it works perfectly fine, but if you exit the program and relaunch it, the crackling returns. Currently using driver 5.1.2602 from MS, but I also tried the ones from Creative's site and the default MS drivers, same problems. I also tried lowering the sound acceleration level in DXDiag, no help there either. Oh and yeah I have a VIA Based Motherboard (VIA KX133)

 

Can someone recommend a solution or driver release that can fix this?

Or perhaps a better sound card? These Santa Cruz cards look interesting, where can I get one in Canada or online?

[Alien 1]

It is possible that I could be wrong about this, but I beleive that it's not your sound card @ fault, but your mobo - specifically the chipset. From what I've read there were some major issues with the KX133 chipset, especially with the Live cards. If you haven't tried a BIOS update, you could try try that, but it may be wiser to look for a newer mobo.

 

I'm not bashing VIA [i have the KT133A chipset myself], just the KX133.

[pmistry 0]

It is possible, however, this issue only comes in Windows XP, not Windows 2000 or Windows 98/ME. I tried using the same drivers from 2000 but still nothing. It must be a driver issue under Windows XP.

[sapiens74 0]

its the VIa chipset you are using the south bridge that has known issues with SBLIVE.

 

Try the PCI latency patch,

 

or trying it in another PCI slot

[JediBaron 0]

Yep you've run into the SB Live flaw It's a major hardware problem that exists in about 25% of all Live cards. The major symptoms are sound distortions, AGP bus data corruption, and random hard drive corruption. Some people have been able to fix the problem somewhat with the Latency Patch. But if that doesn't work your only solution is to remove the Live card and reinstall Windows without it plugged in. It messes up the m/b's and Windows' PNP so that even replacing the sound card with a different one will not normally fix your problems. Reinstalling Windows and forcing it to re-init the PNP system on the m/b and it windows seems to be the only fix for it

 

BTW - According to Creative this problem doesn't and hasn't ever existed, so I guess we're not really having this conversation.

[pmistry 0]

My VIA southbridge is 686A, I thought the bug affected the 686B.

[SneakX 0]

No! I can assume everyone that this problem isn't related to VIA and SBLive combo. I got these distortions in UT too and I'm running on a BX chipset with a SBLive Value from the first generation. The solution for me was only to upgrade SBLive XP driver.

[Alien 1]

Fairy Nuff

[pmistry 0]

I've tried so many different drivers, default XP, updated MS drivers from Windows Update, Creative updated ones from their site, and the Windows 2000 Liveware drivers. All give same result.

[SneakX 0]

Sorry for you...

And I don't know if I still have the problem cuz it was intermittent and I don't play UT anymore (waiting a new rig to play UT2003 )

[pmistry 0]

Well the new Creative drivers for Live! cards fixed all my issues, man Creative actually got something done. I am still waiting for their reply on Audigy compatibility, 3 weeks already.