KYPREO

Hi,

I have an Asus 2D notebook which has a Sis 7012 integrated sound card. This uses an ALC650 AC'97 chip. The notebook came shipped with drivers from Realtek. They are v3.49.Now performance with these drivers was shit. Doing the sound tests in 3DMark03 revealed the following results:
no sound = 23.5fps (average)
24 sounds = 15.7fps (average)

Doom 3 was also very stuttery (graphics drivers are all up to date = cat v4.9).

I downloaded v.3.63 drivers from Realtek and for some reason I would get no hardware buffer whatsoever - couldn't do the sound tests in 3dMArk03 as it did not recognise any kind of hardware acceleration. Same thing using DxDiag.

Realtek suggested I try the v3.63 BETA drivers. Ok, now these work fine, and got the following results in 3dMark03:
no sound = 23.5fps (avg)
24 sounds = 19.7fps (avg)

A vast improvement. Doom 3 is also heaps better.

However, in Sound Manager Control Panel, I no longer have a "speaker configuration tab" - the one which allows you to configure inputs as outputs in order to use 5.1 surround sound.

I asked Realtek about this and gave them all my card details and they said "this feature is disabled by your notebook".

I'm not very satisfied with this at all.

Is there some way to manually enable the surround features (and speaker configuration tab) either in the registry or some other way? I think some kind of auto-detect process by the driver is not recognising the card's capability for 5.1.

Also, is there an alternative driver set or tweaking utility which will allow me to achieve even better results for my audio hardware? a 20% hit on frame rates during 24 sounds is still not ideal, and would love to be able to improve it if I can.

All help very much appreciated.

eggs420

I have had the same problem with onboard ac97 audio. Eventually I found a driver (sis I think) that worked well..Try the sis drivers.. http://download.sis.com/

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KYPREO

Thanks! I'll give them a go.

KYPREO

Nope no good.

I did a clean uninstall of the Realtek drivers (including registry clean), and installed the Sis drivers for my chipset (7012) - no good. Sis's drivers are OLD too - last updated in early 2003. The installer only got half way through and come up with an error window with a number in it.

I manually installed the drivers from the .inf file in the WinXP folder, but I had no hardware sound buffer in DxDiag and no sound tests in 3dMark03.

Surely this is all an INF file thing. Maybe I can mod the Realtek INF file to turn on this speaker configuration tab for my card?

FWIW, I tried copying the new v.3.63 driver *.sys file over the existing one using the OEM drivers (Realtek v.3.49). It switched off the speak configuration stuff straight away which suggests something in the driver file itself?

VERY annoying because I either have to put up with stuttering games or no 5.1...grrrr

eggs420

So the official drivers give you no dx support, but fix the lag (hard to tell without dx support though) yet the betas give you the performance you want but without 5.1? Sounds like you should just put up with 2-speaker until those beta drivers run their course and go to official.

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eggs420

Actually, if you want 5.1 THAT bad, poke at some of these 3rd party filters like http://matrix-mixer.sourceforge.net/ .... Might find something doable until a new driver is released.

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dj_stick

try using the control panel that comes with the drivers, rather that windows

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KYPREO

Thank you everyone for your support.

Sort of, but not quite.

The official v.3.49 drivers provided with the notebook give me everything but results in laggy performance.

The newest official v.3.63 drivers give me nothing - no dx, and as you point out, I can't test whether lag is fixed because I have no sound! The official SIS drivers for my chip do the same thing.

The beta v.3.63 drivers give me dx and fix the lag, but the sound manager utility which comes with the drivers no longer has a page which allows me to configure the inputs as outputs and use 5.1 sound.

Yeah thats what I am talking about. The control panel that comes with the drivers, called "Sound Manager" no longer has the 5.1 configuration page.

Its as if the driver itself is switching off these features on my card for some reason.

I'll give the Matrix Mixer a try.

Thanks again all.

eggs420

No problem..Let us know how it turns out.

__________________
AMD64 2800+ // Chaintech VNF3-250 // 2X512mb PDI ddr400 2-3-2-5 // 80gb 7200RPM WD w/8mb cache // Leadtek 6800GT // 144kbit IDSL

Clan -=CCC=- Admin
69.31.96.68 BF2 PUBLIC RANKED SERVER
205.218.65.236 BF2 DEMO SERVER

KYPREO

Update.

A3.64 version driver came out and it now installs fine, but the input/output configuration stuff is still disabled.

Interestingly, if I use the OEM drivers (A3.49), where 5.1 is enabled, and copy over the actual WDM driver with a newer one, then the 5.1 stuff is disabled.

This leads me to believe the input/output switching is disabled in the driver itself, and not an installation, registry, or INF file problem.

I haven't had a go at that 3rd party stuff yet..I'm not sure its the same as what I had before. Will it work for games? I believe my chip supports 5.1 whereas the MatrixMixer appears to extract 5.1 from a stereo channel?