New Motherboard, Sound problems in SHIII

[Reece]

Hi, I have just updated my system & the new motherboard has onboard SoundMAX, the old board had AC97 sound & no problems, this has the following:
Can't hear the band playing or the crowd clapping and cheering, if I listen hard it is there but very quiet, also with TC the sounds occasionally jumps making a loud clunk sound, any idea's other than changing the hardware acceleration, this usually stuffs everything else up!!
Thanks.:yep:

[irish1958]

Reece,
What happens when you turn the hardware acceleration off? On my system, I have to turn it off or the sound is all screwed-up.

[Reece]

At this stage I haven't actually tried it, in the past I have fixed one application by changing this setting but typically another fails!!:doh:
Most annoying the last Asus motherboard (A8V Deluxe) had AC97, this one (M3A32-MVP Deluxe) has SoundMax, seems to be a step backwards, there are 2 processors I had disabled from the start: smax4.exe & smax4pnp.exe, most of these processors are not needed, I will try enabling to see if that has an effect, also, just found, in the bios by default, the sound is set to HD, I will set this to AC97 & see what happens!:-? Too many damn options, and what makes it worse is each try means a reboot then run SHIII and that takes just as long to load!!:lol:

[Reece]

Well I tried every concievable option but no change, setting hardware acceleration off stops the jumping/stuttering sound, but then some sounds are really loud & others far too quiet, in the nav map view no sounds!!:-? Very poor, so much for new boards!:damn:
I described the jumping.clunking sound being in TC mode but also occurs when holding the shift key and arrow keys zooming just above the water!:doh:
Should I now invest in a sound card?:cry::dead:
Any advice welcome.:oops::yep:

[Graf Paper]

Try getting your hands on the newest drivers for your motherboard and see if that helps. Aside from that or flashing your BIOS with an upgrade, you'll probably need to invest in a seperate sound card.

[Reece]

Try getting your hands on the newest drivers for your motherboard and see if that helps. First thing I did!!:yep:
you'll probably need to invest in a seperate sound card.Yes, starting to look that way!:roll:
flashing your BIOSThere is only 1 version higher & resolves only issues with ram sizes, and since flashing bios's scare the poop out of me I think I'll give that a miss, but thanks.:up:

[Graf Paper]

Okay, I've had my first slug of morning coffee and my three remaning brain cells have begun to fire....so a thought occurred to me....

I had a similar experience, though not as severe as yours. Oddly enough, the fix was to dump the "Improved Wave Textures" mod. It might be that you've reached critical mass with the eye-candy and need to reduce the load a bit.

Where the water is concerned, it takes a lot of horsepower to dynamically render all that sloshing about and you will indeed get jumps and stutters when "flying low" with the camera.

Try disabling any mods that affect water or crank your anisotropic filtering setting down a notch or two on your video card (this setting helps to prevent that "grid" look in the water). It may be necessary to tune down many other settings on the video card as well before you get smooth framerates.

Funny how people talk about how SH3 is so old and obsolete, yet it is capable of bringing a modern computer to its knees with the details it can render using all the excellent mods.

[Reece]

The video is fine, the stuttering is with the sound, it's hard to explain but mostly it makes a scratchy "chunk" sound especially when there is a lot of noises, starting a new patrol in port is really bad & the sound is just so crappy, drives me nut!!:stare::damn:
My old system ran the same setup perfectly, this new one with duel processors HD 4850 pro video card etc should handle this with a breeze, I think what may be happening is that the Digital sound lags the high video speed & crashes when new sounds come into effect, until the sound is cached then the sounds are ok, that is until a new sound comes in again!!:doh: Setting the "Hardware Acceleration" to nil the video goes ahead & doesn't wait for sounds, so half the sounds are skipped, thats why no more crashing sounds just lost ones!!:-? seems to be a sound cache problem, funny that the sound chip doesn't use any IRQ line, no handshaking!:roll: Well that's the way I understand it!:88):yep:

[Graf Paper]

Try setting your PCI Delay to a higher or lower number in the BIOS. Typical setting is 128. This forces the system to wait x number of FSB cycles so slower peripherals can keep up, like sound cards.

Assuming your mobo has that feature. I'm not up-to-date on all this new PCI Express stuff. My last "new" motherboard was already old tech when I bought it last month. Such is the life of a PC nut with a shoestring budget.

Can you provide me with the sound card driver version? I'll try digging around a bit and see if I can help you turn up some better drivers.

[EDIT]

Just did a search. Analog Devices offers no drivers and refers you to the vendor websites, so that old driver from Asus is as good as it's going to get.

I did notice numerous hits on complaints about SoundMAX. Seems like you're the victim of yet another shoddy implementation of what was supposed to be "revolutionary" technology. Even AD no longer supports SoundMAX.

So it's off to the store with you to pick up a decent sound card!

[Reece]

Yeh!!:lol: just picked it up, not installed yet so keeping my fingers crossed,:oops::yep: I am not sure that changing the PCIE frequency would effect the onboard sound, could give it a go, the standard is 100, I have it set to 110, tried the game at either with no luck, if this card has the same problem :dead::doh: Oh wouldn't that suck!!!:cry: I would have to give it a go then!:-? Thanks for the time helping, I appreciate it.:up:
Edit: So much for the new card!!: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=968440#post968440

[Wolfehunter]

Best option is get yourself a soundblaster card. Something within your budget.

And then turn off the onboard one in your bios.

Other option is return your MBoard and exchange it for another type.;)

[Reece]

The one I purchased that is Vista only is a Sound Blaster, all the places that I viewed stated it was XP compatable, not that I really looked into it closely, just figured all sound cards would have been compatable!:x Shame on Creative!:nope: