Problems with GF4 (and ATI 9700) and Creative Sound cards

Elevyn

I just recently had reason to buy a whole new system setup and opted to go with the following:

AMD XP 2000+
MSI KT3 Ultra2
Either GF4 4600 or ATI 9700
Audigy Gamer
768Mb DDR 266Mhz memory

I finally got all this put together and installed a fresh copy of XP(SP1) got all the latest vendor driver and BIOS upgrades (as of 10/22/2002), and sat down to start what I thought to be a nice change from the slow system I had prior to an unfortunate lightning strike.

After getting all the driver in and all the games reinstalled (DAoC and Deus Ex and some other Directx games), I found that anytime I started a Directx game after a couple of minutes they would all crash to desktop. After three days of tinkering and reading boards (especially this one, awesome collection of knowledge you have here), I came to the conclusion that there is no way of getting the hardware that I had bought to work together to play these games.

First off, I put this nice new ATI 9700 Pro that I had bought in and had problems with games. After downloading all the drivers from here and trying each on in turn, no matter what I did I could not get it to work. I used the Microsft troubleshooting techniques for DirectX games by disabling AGP Acceleration in Directx, and the turning down the hardware acceleration in the troubleshooting tab in Display properties. No dice.

Next, since I did not have problems with my GF4 4600Ti I decided to put it back in and try to get it working with these games. But alas, this did not work either. I did all the same stuff that I had with the ATI card and found that it did not make any difference. At this point I was getting extremely frustrated.

After this I decided to remove my Audigy Gamer card and replace it with a SB Live Gamer that I had in another computer. On both cards I put the Directx hardware acceleration down to nothing and still had problems. With all configurations, with the sound card and AGP graphics card in the machine, all Directx games still crashed to desktop after a few minutes of play. PLease keep in mind that I did try these configurations switching PCI slots for the sound card as to try and prevent any IRQ conflicts anywhere (not that it grabbed a conflict in any PCI slot, but I thought I would give it a shot).

After all of this and three days worth of tweaking and driver loading, I still did not have a system that worked with any Directx games in XP. So, I took the next step and downloaded the time bombed DirectX 9 and installed it. This allowed me to stay in the games a little longer, but it still crashed after a little bit of time.

Finally, I decided to take a minimalist approach to the situation and took out my sound card altogether (at this point I only had my SB Live Gamer in place). After I took the card out and rebooted, went in to play my games, they all seemed to work with no problems. Matter of fact I played DAoC for 4 hours tonight without a single crash (although soundless).

With all this said and done, does anyone here know of a way to play games and have sound also? I am thinking of getting another sound card NOT made by Creative (shudders at the $$$ I have spent on these cards already). I am not sure I am going to keep my ATI board as the Gamma correction on that card absolutely sucks and I feel that I am playing in the dark all the time in games even with the Game Gamma slider turned all the way up and the monitor brightness is already at full (sucks too, with all the good reviews of the ATI card). So, if anyone has had this problem and found a way to play Directx games with sound with the same or comparable configuration, please let me know.

Thank you for your time.

shuki

well it definitly does suck to be in your position. Though I have both an r8500 and a Ti4200 and an audigy and have never had any problems with them. I've used both GPU's and audigy on two different VIA (gasp) mobos. A7V-133 and a KX7-333 with no problem. Yeah, yeah, good and nice but that doesn't help you much does it...

What I would do is start over. I mean put on a fresh OS install and all of your base programs. Do not put on any games or any audio or video drivers. I also would NOT put on SP1 if you're using winXP. Just put on OS and the individual security updates but no SP1, audio or video drivers. Now once you're here, do yourself a HUGE favor and create a disk image (disk image 2k2 works great with NTFS *thank you Zardon!*). Now at any point in time, you are only 10 minutes away from a full system restore and you can put in either 4600 or 9700 and be good to go

After you have the image, I would put on the VIA 1.38 4-in-1 driver. Then I would use those audigy drivers that were released either by Compaq or that cd released in Europe (or maybe those are even up for DL on SB's site now... maybe peek over in the audio forum to check...) Then install the latest official betas from ATI for your 9700. And there was a D3D patch available for the 9700 but I don't think you need it any longer with the latest 6193 betas (anyone know for sure as I'm not a 9700 owner unfortunately..)

edit - you should also read this thread in regards to changing hardware with the audigy http://www.driverheaven.net/thread.php?id=3955

wonkanoby

got a decent psu with combined over 200 watts and a sensible amps 28 or so 3.3v not like some 14 amps 3.3?

Forge

I've got a great system and suffered the instability you mention. I tossed in a GTXP and am doing great. These KT3 Ultra2s are fantastic mobos.

The root of the problem? It appears Creative's drivers now force certain old 686B/8233 workarounds on, even on the new and fixed 8235. These fixes, on an already fixed mobo, cause big problems.

I suggest doing what I did, and let your Audigy help hold down your desk. The TB Santa Cruz and the Game Theater XP are both great cards, neither has given me a lick of trouble.

Elevyn

After much tweaking and many hours of waited troubleshooting time, I seem to have found the problem. It seems there are three setting to completely disable the onboard sound card (AC97 Audio, Game Port and MIDI Port). By default all of these are enabled. I could of sworn that I personally disabled all three of these option many times, but on a whim I went through all the settings again. Sure enough, the game port setting was enabled. I disabled it, put the Audigy back in, and everything seems to be working now.


All I have to hope for now is they will release a full version of DX 9.0 before the one I installed expires. I am not reinstalling again anytime soon... I am tired of it! After 2-3 weeks of tweaking and driver downloads I just wanna play!

I thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

Richard

Kelsenellenelvian

If not there is a directx uninstaller tghat works for dx9... So don't worry.

GREEKRAGE

Damn sorry i didnt see this post earlier.

That was the first thing i would have told you to check as i had a similar problem with my
onboard audio.

And the second that i was gonna tell you to check was that your sound card wasnt in pci slot 1 or 2.


If you still have sound related problems make sure that there isnt any jumper to move to totaly disable the onboard(check your manual).
My Chaintech also needed that to be done or the joystick port wouldnt work on my sound card.

GREEKRAGE

I would stronly suggest 350 at least....he has a monster of a vid card

RIV@NVX

I got KT3 Ultra-ARU (not 2) and Audigy - and even if I don't disable onboard sound it works. Maybe because I use kX drivers, don't know.

BTW, you maybe disabled all those ports, but when you flash BIOS, CMOS gets reset.

And really is, it is an excellent MoBo (especiall with MBUltra 133 mod).