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3 Video cards + X-fi = FAIL.

B

Bigbacon

Fully [H]
2FA
Joined
Jul 12, 2007
Messages
22,647
I added a 3rd card to my PC and now my X-fi fails horribly and eithe crashes the machine, sound just cuts out, or it gets mega static during game play. Anything else and it's fine.

Is there anything one can do other than get a new sound card?

I am up for sound card suggestions long as they produce pretty high quality sound comparible to the X-fi and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Yea, games are completely unplayable. SCP all the time! sound lags and cuts in and out randomly.
 
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Taking the 3rd card out totally fixed the issue.
Guess my wife gets a better video card just in time for the Sims 3 sometime this year.

I'll still get a new sound card if I can add the 3rd card back in and NOT have this crap.

I am totally done with CL until they can start making good hardware that doesn't end up as trash. well it's also only since Vista, my X-fi never had these issue in XP.
 
Any chance it's a power supply issue? I'd expect to see corruption across the board, but audio is largely based on clean power: the sound card might be the first to show the effects of voltage fluxuation
 
I am pretty certain I have more than enough juice.

There is always some, snap crackle pop with the x-fi and vista it seems, even my last PC had some + a few random lockups here and there but this was amazingly bad.

How would I test this though? Thats the trick.

Taking the 3rd card out fixes it for the most part but it could be anything. The card was also right next to the Xfi as well.
 
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Well, if the 3rd card was the only thing that made the change from good to bad, try this:

test cards 1 and 3 only, that will test if it's somehow an issue with the new card.

also what happens if you use 3 cars and onboard audio?

can you give us your complete system specs?
 
The X-Fi is typically also FAIL with only one video card as well :)
 
I don't even want to try onboard audio because that means uninstalling the CL drivers and installing some other driver.

System specs are in sig
I added a 9600GSO as the third card
on Vista 64
 
latest mb bios? the p6t6 had issues until the latest bios fixed issues with 3 cards. Maybe the p6t needs updating? I also noticed your sig says your running at 3.6. Try without the overclock?
 
I updated my MB Bios (thank god it fixed sleep mode!)

This is my PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817702007&Tpk=BFG 800

I really think it can provide enough juice to power everything well. I would think I would have run into more issues if PSU wasn't cutting it.

Could there be issues just because the GSO is right next to the sound card?

EDIT

I should add, I was powering the GSO through one of those 2x 4pin to PCIe 6pin adaptors.
 
Try something funny, try this program:
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Several people are reporting issues X-Fi with SLI or even a driver update for NVIDIA cards...that would indicate the issue being NVIDIA's once again(the whole craptastic nForce PCI bus mess)...so I would be interested in those data...and if your X-Fi's PCI slot shares any IRQ with a PCI-E slot fitted with a GPU?
 
Atech said:
Try something funny, try this program:
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Several people are reporting issues X-Fi with SLI or even a driver update for NVIDIA cards...that would indicate the issue being NVIDIA's once again(the whole craptastic nForce PCI bus mess)...so I would be interested in those data...and if your X-Fi's PCI slot shares any IRQ with a PCI-E slot fitted with a GPU?
Click to expand...

oooo... this looks kinda fun.

I have to chcek the IRQs tonight but I may not be able to. I certainly do want to try this latency check as I was also reading CL forums about the old Nvidia issue. CL claims x58 doesn't have this issue but that doesn't seem entirely true.
 
Bigbacon said:
oooo... this looks kinda fun.

I have to chcek the IRQs tonight but I may not be able to. I certainly do want to try this latency check as I was also reading CL forums about the old Nvidia issue. CL claims x58 doesn't have this issue but that doesn't seem entirely true.
Click to expand...

I have a "fuzzy" suspicion that something with NVIDIA's drivers/SLI is doing something not good to the PCI/PCI-E busses...but I look forward to seeing what you find.
 
Ok.... back to this. Took out the GSO so I am only using the 2 280s.

I got that latency thing and it's weird.

L4D it stayed under 500 for the duration of play. I only played about 10 minutes but it never really went above 200

Stalker CS it started athe same way but over time it went WAY up. So for hte first 5 min it was under 500. Then it jumped to about a steady 500-600. Static started, not too much. 5 minutes later it was nearing 1000. static was getting worse. When I finally stopped playing (about 20 minutes) it was floating around 2000 constantly and the static was REALLY BAD.

After quitting the game, it took about a minute for it to normalize back to about 130-150 which is what it sits at when not playing a game.

So I have no idea what the issue is.

X-fi is also not sharing an IRQ with the video cards but it is sharing with PCI Express Root 1 & 5
 
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Bigbacon said:
Ok.... back to this. Took out the GSO so I am only using the 2 280s.

I got that latency thing and it's weird.

L4D it stayed under 500 for the duration of play. I only played about 10 minutes but it never really went above 200

Stalker CS it started athe same way but over time it went WAY up. So for hte first 5 min it was under 500. Then it jumped to about a steady 500-600. Static started, not too much. 5 minutes later it was nearing 1000. static was getting worse. When I finally stopped playing (about 20 minutes) it was floating around 2000 constantly and the static was REALLY BAD.

After quitting the game, it took about a minute for it to normalize back to about 130-150 which is what it sits at when not playing a game.

So I have no idea what the issue is.

X-fi is also not sharing an IRQ with the video cards but it is sharing with PCI Express Root 1 & 5
Click to expand...


Sound to me like something is hogging the PCI-E bus...have you tried with no SLI...just to test?
 
Bigbacon said:
I don't even want to try onboard audio because that means uninstalling the CL drivers and installing some other driver.
Click to expand...
Are you sure you need to uninstall your CL drivers? I used to run two sound cards at the same time, but that was under Windows XP. I haven't tried it with Vista though.

Atech said:
Sound to me like something is hogging the PCI-E bus...have you tried with no SLI...just to test?
Click to expand...

That's what I am thinking as well.

I can reproduce this with a single 8800GTS but simply setting my PCI-16x slot to 1x and playing a game such as BF2.
 
Met-AL said:
That's what I am thinking as well.

I can reproduce this with a single 8800GTS but simply setting my PCI-16x slot to 1x and playing a game such as BF2.
Click to expand...

I wonder if NVIDIA's drivers does something "special" in SLI-mode that could cause this...or it's the Creative drivers combined with NVIDIA's SLI that is the culprit....interesting none the less.
 
Atech said:
I wonder if NVIDIA's drivers does something "special" in SLI-mode that could cause this...or it's the Creative drivers combined with NVIDIA's SLI that is the culprit....interesting none the less.
Click to expand...

I dunno. My theory is that the PCI-E bus gets loaded to near max and causes latency issues on the PCI bus for which a device such as an X-Fi card is sensitive to.

What does adding a 9800GSO to a pair of 285's do? Since the cards are different speeds and generations, is there some type of timing thing going on with nVidia's drivers over the PCI-E bus?
 
Met-AL said:
I dunno. My theory is that the PCI-E bus gets loaded to near max and causes latency issues on the PCI bus for which a device such as an X-Fi card is sensitive to.
Click to expand...

I suspect driver isusses as the problem persists even when in "ilde" mode...

What does adding a 9800GSO to a pair of 285's do? Since the cards are different speeds and generations, is there some type of timing thing going on with nVidia's drivers over the PCI-E bus?
Click to expand...

No clue, but I suspect some sort of driver anomali...doing something it shouldn't.
 
Met-AL said:
I dunno. My theory is that the PCI-E bus gets loaded to near max and causes latency issues on the PCI bus for which a device such as an X-Fi card is sensitive to.
Click to expand...

PCI-E isn't a bus though; it's a point-to-point serial connection and each device get it's own dedicated lanes. That's completely different and separate from PCI.
 
forget about the GSO. It was originally put in to be a physic card but I am not going to use it and I gave my wife's computer a shiny new card and the gso went back into the media PC where the shiney new card was going to go.

So, the PCI bus gets the back burner over the PCIe aparently. I have a PCI card.

Might be why L4D works well because it not as hardware hungry as Stalker. Yet, I have SCP in 2142 as well just it doesn't grow like STALKER did.

So I am thinking of picking up a X-fi thats PCIe from BB and seeing what happens. If it doens't fix anything I can at least return it.

I dont have the issue in idle mode.
 
Bigbacon said:
forget about the GSO. It was originally put in to be a physic card but I am not going to use it and I gave my wife's computer a shiny new card and the gso went back into the media PC where the shiney new card was going to go.

So, the PCI bus gets the back burner over the PCIe aparently. I have a PCI card.

Might be why L4D works well because it not as hardware hungry as Stalker. Yet, I have SCP in 2142 as well just it doesn't grow like STALKER did.

So I am thinking of picking up a X-fi thats PCIe from BB and seeing what happens. If it doens't fix anything I can at least return it.

I dont have the issue in idle mode.
Click to expand...

Let me know how the change from PCI to PCI-E goes :)
 
is the sound card a pcie card?

nvm just re read that last post. is the sound card blocking the fan? I had to remove an extra video card cause my sound card was blocking the fan for it and causing the card to overheat.
 
Shroomalistic said:
is the sound card a pcie card?

nvm just re read that last post. is the sound card blocking the fan? I had to remove an extra video card cause my sound card was blocking the fan for it and causing the card to overheat.
Click to expand...

No, there is a slot worth of space between the bottom video card and the sound card.
 
okk. so I bought an Xfi PCIe fatility or whatever it is ($140)

So far it has TOTALLY fixed my issue. I played Clear Sky again with that latency thing on. and it never went above 200 and was constantly between 80 and 150 and there was NO static, crackles or pops at all after about 30 minutes of play.

I'll mess around with more stuff later. Now again, I am using only SLI 280s and no physics card (cant use one anymore.)

Maybe I need a new motherbaord now....
 
Bigbacon said:
okk. so I bought an Xfi PCIe fatility or whatever it is ($140)

So far it has TOTALLY fixed my issue. I played Clear Sky again with that latency thing on. and it never went above 200 and was constantly between 80 and 150 and there was NO static, crackles or pops at all after about 30 minutes of play.

I'll mess around with more stuff later. Now again, I am using only SLI 280s and no physics card (cant use one anymore.)

Maybe I need a new motherbaord now....
Click to expand...

Glad to see you resolved the issue. Must have been something with the pci bus. However it does sounds funny having to replace a x-fi card with another x-fi card to fix your issue. :p
 
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