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Re: X-Fi or Onboard Audio?

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:50 am
by just brew it!
titan wrote:
The entire PCI Bus is on one IRQ.

Actually, no.

There are four IRQ lines on the PCI bus, which map in an implementation-dependent way to hardware interrupts.

Re: X-Fi or Onboard Audio?

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 7:56 am
by titan
just brew it! wrote:
titan wrote:
The entire PCI Bus is on one IRQ.

Actually, no.

There are four IRQ lines on the PCI bus, which map in an implementation-dependent way to hardware interrupts.

Interesting...

The systems I've used only showed one IRQ being used by the devices on the PCI Bus, so that's how I drew my conclusion.

Re: X-Fi or Onboard Audio?

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 8:10 am
by Taddeusz
titan wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
titan wrote:
The entire PCI Bus is on one IRQ.

Actually, no.

There are four IRQ lines on the PCI bus, which map in an implementation-dependent way to hardware interrupts.

Interesting...

The systems I've used only showed one IRQ being used by the devices on the PCI Bus, so that's how I drew my conclusion.

Many, but not all, motherboard manuals will tell you which PCI slots share IRQ's with what onboard devices. When I originally bought my X-Fi I had an Asus A8N-E, an nForce 4 Ultra based motherboard. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the nForce 4 is notorious for X-Fi incompatibilities. From the second I installed the card I had terrible crackling problems all the way to no audio. After doing some research along with some trial and error I moved the card to a slot where it wasn't sharing an IRQ. The slot I originally installed it in was being shared by the video card of all things. Once I changed the card to the other slot everything cleared up and I had flawless audio.

Now I have an Intel DP35DP and haven't had any problems with my X-Fi. It's happily sharing an IRQ with a USB controller and doesn't seem to have any issues with that.

Personally, I believe the PCI implementation used by nVidia on the nForce 4 was just a bit flakey. Compound that with the fact that CL likes to write their drivers to hog IRQ's and you have the makings for a minor disaster.

Re: X-Fi or Onboard Audio?

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 8:31 am
by Madman
Taddeusz wrote:
Madman wrote:
X-Fi is definitely a huge improvement over onboard, and that new DTS/DTC pack, which is commercial :evil: :evil: :evil: is great. But the drivers are still nightmare, the card starts to crackle on a regular basis.

Try changing slots to one where IRQ's are not shared with other devices. I don't know why but the X-Fi seems to dislike IRQ sharing. Also, make sure you have the latest drivers. There was a fix some time ago for systems with 4GB or more of RAM.

Easier said than done... There are always some stupid caps that are physically in the way. So either I have all cards in my PC or I have X-Fi in an unshared slot.

I have tried all BIOS, driver and other updates to no avail...

Taddeusz wrote:
Personally, I believe the PCI implementation used by nVidia on the nForce 4 was just a bit flakey. Compound that with the fact that CL likes to write their drivers to hog IRQ's and you have the makings for a minor disaster.


I personally believe that Creative has sucky drivers, because it works just fine for a day, then BOOM, you got the awesome crackling and it stays there. One revision of drivers seemed to recover if you switched the modes, but now they don't.

If it was the chipset, it would take all the shared devices at the same time the X-Fi goes down.

Re: X-Fi or Onboard Audio?

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 9:01 am
by just brew it!
Taddeusz wrote:
Many, but not all, motherboard manuals will tell you which PCI slots share IRQ's with what onboard devices. When I originally bought my X-Fi I had an Asus A8N-E, an nForce 4 Ultra based motherboard. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the nForce 4 is notorious for X-Fi incompatibilities. From the second I installed the card I had terrible crackling problems all the way to no audio. After doing some research along with some trial and error I moved the card to a slot where it wasn't sharing an IRQ. The slot I originally installed it in was being shared by the video card of all things. Once I changed the card to the other slot everything cleared up and I had flawless audio.

I have that exact motherboard, with an X-Fi in it. It was my primary desktop (running XP) until a few months ago when I migrated to a quad core system running Linux. I must've picked the lucky slot right out of the gate on mine, since I've never had a crackling issue; I even used that system to rip quite a bit of my vinyl collection to WAV files.

Re: X-Fi or Onboard Audio?

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2009 10:18 am
by Spec4
Meadows wrote:
This thread died an unjust death. Did the OP ever get his card to work fine?


No, I never attempted the switch because my wedding occupied all of my spare time, but thanks for the reminder.