Scratchy/Popping Chaintech AV710

[Cracker]

I've recently started hearing scratchy sounds and popping coming from both the analog and digital outputs of my Chaintech AV710 (Envy24 chipset). The card worked fine for a while, and I'm certain it's not the speakers.

I didn't experience any problems until I setup (and installed Windows on) a RAID-0 with my onboard RAID controller (ABit KX7-333R). From what I can tell, the most distortion comes when the hard drives are being used heavily. Simply listening to mp3s or watching a DVD doesn't usually cause any distortion. However, installing a program while listening to mp3s or playing games causes distortion.

Here is a list of things I've tried without success:

• Most recent Envy24 drivers, 2nd most recent drivers, and the ones that shipped with the card
• Updated BIOS
• Moved the sound card to a different PCI slot

The sound card doesn't appear to be sharing an IRQ with any other devices, as you can see in the included image.

Am I missing something? Does anybody have any suggestions or similar experiences with this card?

 

[Mister X]

Do you have PCI delay transaction enabled in the system bios?

 

[Cracker]

I don't know at the moment, I'll check in a couple hours when I get home. Should I make sure it's enabled or disabled?

 

[Mister X]

According to the manual it is disabled by default......Try enabling it and see if it helps.

 

[Cracker]

I enabled PCI delay transaction and that didn't help.

Any other ideas?

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

What mobo/cpu is this system running? Also, is the system overclocked?

Reason I ask is that popping is a tell-tale symptom of an out-of-spec pci bus caused by overclocking too far on a chipset that doesn't have a pci lock.

 

[Cracker]

CPU: Athlon XP 1600+
Mobo: ABit KX7-333R

The processor is still locked (I'm lazy) but I've had the bus overclocked from 133 to 166 for years, with the FSB:AGPCI ratio at 5:2:1. I used this card in the overclocked system since December and only recently (2 weeks?) started having these problems.

I just rebooted at default bus speed and the popping is still there.

I also just spent about an hour playing around with PCI latency using PowerStrip. Everything was set at 32 except my network card (80) and my HighPoint RAID controller (64). I tried setting the sound card's PCI latency as low as possible, as high as possible, and varying levels in between. I also changed the latency for the RAID controller for a total of about 20 combinations of the two devices.

None of that eliminated the popping.

 

[Cracker]

Does anybody have any other ideas that might help me out on this? I'm really desperate.

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

have you updated the mobo drivers (VIA hyperions)? This is awfully similar to the old via southbridge / sb live popping issues, though that was with the 626B southbridge not the VT8255 that you probably have. either way, I'd try updating the chipset drivers.

 

[Cracker]

On my very first boot of Windows, the most updated chipset drivers from viaarena.com were the first drivers I installed

Some other advice that I've received was to make sure my drives were grounded (i.e. properly screwed into the case). I did have one of the RAID drives just resting at the bottom of my case, but screwing it into a drive bay didn't help the popping.

I was also warned that a poor quality power supply could be the issue, but I have an Antec (I'm told it's reliable) 350W PSU. 350 watts could potentially not be enough power, because I have 2 RIADed drives and one other HD, a DVD burner, ATI 9600 XT, and 4 case fans.... any thoughts on that?

 

[Eva_Unit_0]

an antec 350W should be more than sufficient for that setup. None of those components are especialy power hungry. Though if you have any extra PSU's around (not even ones that are "better" than the current one...just any other psu's above say 250W) then I'd say give them a shot. Maybe your antec is doing something weird...who knows. Best way to find out is to test it.