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X-Fi problems anyone?

belmicah

Gawd
Joined
Oct 10, 2005
Messages
853
I posted on this earlier and have found a view possible sources of error for those of you with "clipping" problems on X-Fi's. It might be a PCI latency issue. A lot of people are having good luck changing these values. I found a tool that people are using to set these and apparently, they are getting better sound by adjusting.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?&threadid=121190

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=106522&highlight=PCI+Latency+tool

tell me how your experiences were or if you have already tried this
 
I just got mine yesterday and so far so good, no problems. Then again, I'm not exactly running a 'top of the line' computer. Not even decent. :p
 
None of those links are working for me.. can you summerize the problem? I've had my X-fi plat since the release day and havn't ran into any trouble, besides whe I upadted my drivers and it wouldn't save the settings..
 
Lots of people (and I do mean a lot, in fact there is a class action lawsuit pending) are having problems concerning a noise being made during games or other audio chores like listening to music, etc. It sounds like a popping to some. They call this clipping. I have since remedied my problem (which I have posted on numerous times), but I can tell you that creative has no idea what to tell people. Anyways, the problem can be linked to a resource bottleneck (IRQ). Mine was on the same channel as my VGA (19 to be exact). I just moved PCI slots.

I had also tried putting a heatsink on the chip, because a couple of Gawds told me that it was overheating. That made sense to me since this chip is so powerful with that many transistors.

And, finally, some have relieved their woes by trying a utility called PCI latency timer. This allows adjustment of the PCI bus latency which is usually set at like 248 for video cards and 32 for other periferals. Some people were dropping their video card latency to 128 or even 64 and reporting thta the "Sound quality was amazing and so much clearer with no video hiccups" or whatever. I don't know how much to read into this, but more than one person reported an increase in performance.

I really attribute all problems associated with these to be resource (PCI latency, IRQ, etc.) related. However, it might be getting too hot also.
 
The creative forums post Kyle linked to a few days ago answered all these questions. Most people just didn't read the first post all the way.

Basically:

The APU needs cooling, if it's not in a cool case with really good air flow, put a chipset cooler on it.

The motherboard memory/PCI latencies cause the popping by holding PCI data for more than a few milliseconds at a time. Some motherbaord makers have bios updates that fix this, some do not. Ensuring your memory subsystem performance is optimal helps (as in make sure your in dual channel mode with as low a latency as you can set)

The clipping is because the input stages get saturated, especially if game volume levels are set to the highest. The fix is reducing in game volume settings and reducing input volume settings in the mixer applet.

Do these and you mostly have a good sounding X-Fi without popping/clipping.
 
haha.....you mean SPU right? Sound Processing Unit (or APU for Audio..I dunno)

On a side note, I tried turning off 24 bit crystallization and cmss-3d and that seemed to help a little too. Games sounded pretty wierd in entertainment mode with EAX effects turned all the way up on amphitheatre. Damn mode changer.
 
Well, i have notice a "tiny" bit of a "popping" sound, but my speakers were not up loud at all, so i assumed it must have been an in game issue (well, i have only had this problem in SOME 'cenimatics', not while playing the actual game) it doesnt bother me THAT much, but i might try something............
 
belmicah said:
haha.....you mean SPU right? Sound Processing Unit (or APU for Audio..I dunno)

On a side note, I tried turning off 24 bit crystallization and cmss-3d and that seemed to help a little too. Games sounded pretty wierd in entertainment mode with EAX effects turned all the way up on amphitheatre. Damn mode changer.


YES..Sorry, fingers thinking for themselves.

Anyway, have you tried the suggestions?
 
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