New SBLIVE drivers...

[Donald2B 0]

Dragon-Lord I would generally have to agree with you on that, but I have an exception to the rule. My home computer, the one in my signature, is a dual processor and I am running in full accelleration mode with NO popping, static or whatever. I can play all games using full EAX support and I haven't had a single hiccup to date. Yet my work machine is almost identical in everyway except for faster processors. So I don't know what is so special about my home machine because I am running the latest Liveware! 3 drivers. So it just makes me wonder why one works fine and the other doesn't.

 

I will have to look into this some more.

[ThC 129 0]

PCI latency is the factor. Since the newer CPUs use more power the PCI bus isnt getting the power the Live! needs this is what causes the popping/cracking/whatnot. Ive heard that adjusting the PCI latency helps some but Im not sure you can try and see. That is one of the reasons I ditched my Live! card is because of crap drivers and the amount of power it hogs on the PCI bus. I got a SantaCruz now and I like it a lot more than my Live!

[Donald2B 0]

Excuse me for being a little ignorant, but how does one go about changing the PCI latency? Is this a bios setting?

[ThC 129 0]

yeah if you have an AWARD BIOS, then go to PCI and Power Properties i think it is. And it should be in there, if its not in there its going to be in Chipset properties. I dont know what to change the latency to probably down i would think but this is going to effect all PCI devices, I know the default is 32 or something to that effect so change it down to something lower than that i cant give you an exact number because i havent heard of anything other than that. Make sure you look in your Mobo manual about the PCI latency, Frontside bus and Freq Multiplier because if your latency is too high you can fry your cards.

[Dragon-Lord 0]

I just moved my SBLive to my "legacy" machine (Tyan BX series @ 750+ mhz p3) and put an Santa Cruz in my new dual VP6 (@960+ mhz). The Santa Cruz only cost $80 and is phenomenal. Now, DirectX8 support is still not available in the drivers, so I can't speak to how good d3d sound is (right now, it is aweful, hehe). But they make it clear that they are only up to DX7, so I'll give them some slack. But not as long as the year and a half I have been waiting on Creative that is.

 

The last time I spent money on a Creative Labs branded product was last summer...and I intend to keep it that way. And I won't be authorizing their products in any of my companies either.

 

Creative Labs forgot the simple lesson that while the consumers don't run SMP (yet), the IT Pros who authorize their corporate volume (and often high profile) purchases often do...

 

:}

[Dragon-Lord 0]

hmmm...I just did a new OS (2k server) install on the dual machine and lo and behold the problems that I was having with the Santa Cruz under DX8 are gone. I also upgraded from DX7 to DX8.1 (what the heck), with no problems.

 

So, I can only assume that the legacy SBLive issue (i.e. creative can't write a decent uninstaller either it appears) was the cause of my DX8 sound oddness.

 

Now, I am getting very sweet sound in all my applications and games.

 

:}

[kingtrey 0]

maybe i'm wrong for interupting the santa cruz convo, but the topic of this post is to find out if the new SBLive drivers are good or not, and i don't think its been made very clear whether or not they are good yet. if anybody knows for sure if these should be used, please post it here, thanks!!

[Dragon-Lord 0]

back on topic, I saw no improvements in any outstanding issue with the latest 3209 SBlive drivers under Win2K/SMP. All the same bugs and problems for the past 18 months remain.

 

sigh,

 

:}

[Donald2B 0]

Same problems here. Didn't fix a thing for me.

 

8)

[kingtrey 0]

damn, thats what i was afraid of ... how hard is it to make a good set of drivers for Win2k? the Win98 ones are fine, you wouldn't think it would be very difficult to do. oh well, i guess thats too much to ask

[rgodart 0]

Damned creative. I don't have a dual-system but the drivers still suck. i get cracks while playing mp3's. But that's not enough to make me dump win2k. I'd rather buy a soundcard from another brand than leaving win2k.

[ThC 129 0]

i dont know it cant be that hard to make decent drivers for win2k, i mean there are plenty of other sound card compaines out there...wait there arent really anymore. Geez it cant be that hard to fix i mean the 9x drivers are pretty good. And also what ever happened to their driver updates when i 1st got my live they released 2 new live!ware versions in less than 6mos. Now its been almost 1 1/2 if not 2 years since the release of LW 3 and there has been no news about live!ware 4 or even any attempt to make inroads at the SMP issue.