Is this OK?

[fsh42na]

I'm building a low end pc for a friend using:

ECS Fry's special package deal mobo
Celeron 430
Powercolor HD 3450 video card
Spare Samsung 250gb SATA drive
Pioneer 115D dvd burner
Enermax 500w ps
onboard sound

The problem is that this video card has an onboard sound chip that has output through an optional HDMI adapter. I was having problems with getting sound out of the speakers till I decided to test out the onboard video along the onboard sound. The sound was fine. So I investigated further and noticed that if I left out the HD sound driver during my ATI catalyst install, then the onboard worked fine. The problem in that in device manager, I have a question mark adjacent to "HD audio (exact name escapes me)". I disabled it, but it just shows with an "x" through it now. Will this be a problem? Should I uninstall the HD audio (not sure if I can even do this)?

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[XFXSupport]

That should be fine. A red X in the device's icon is normal when you disable anything. I am not familiar with AMD's drivers but there may also be a place in their driver to disable the HDMI pass-through, which in my opinion would be better than just disabling it in Device Manager. Either way it shouldn't hurt anything.

 

[fsh42na]

Excellent. Wish I had used an XFX card for this computer though. Great support from XFX!


Thanks for your help.

 

[fsh42na]

well, I tried to disable the HDMI sound so I wouldn't have a red "x" in my device manager, but, upon reboot, the device is "found" again and Win XP wants to locate the drivers for it. Documentation from Powercolor is sparse to say the least regarding this issue. It'll probably be fine the way it is, but it's just annoying to me.

Does anyone know if this HDMI sound is a characteristic of the higher end HD 4850/4870 cards? I've got 2 sets of these that I'll be using in Crossfire along with onboard sound. I hope there is a way to disable and make "invisible" these sound chips so they aren't being discovered.