After building the system in my sig (running XP Pro SP2) I've been getting frequent stuttering while doing most kinds of 'multimedia' activity. -Gaming is flawless at all times -DVD playback is fine IIRC -Videos on youtube will stall and stutter even when fully buffered, while the audio makes a kind of "brrrrpp" noise -When leaving one application to process something (such as Audacity processing some audio) and switching another to foreground (eg; Firefox) often causes the mouse pointer icon itself to freeze on-screen, but allowing the pointer itself to move invisibly and even let me click on things, until the processing is finished. -Music playback in WMP or Winamp occasionally pops and clicks, regardless of whether it's playing through the Firewire 410 or the Realtek on-board chip Isn't a Dual-core system supposed to alleviate that kind of stuttering, rather than cause it? I didn't have these problems on my A64 system.. Worse, the same thing happens when I try to record music with this system, which is rather unfortunate as it's supposed to be my pseudo-DAW (ie; not a dedicated DAW) If I record some audio using my M-Audio Firewire 410, it stutters, crackles, glitches and pops in a cyclical/rhythmic way - Example below: MP3 Recording The above problem occurs regardless of what program I record in, whether it be Cubase SX3, Audacity or any other. Changing latency settings in the Firewire410 control panel changes the 'pattern' of the glitch in a recording, but doesn't cure it. Recording with the onboard Realtek Audio of the 680i SLI produces the same result, but with the glitch less noticable. What leaves me baffled is how even the most demanding games don't produce the same effect on this system, and not once have I heard a pop, click or glitch while playing games on this system. ------------------------------- Things I've tried to no avail: -The obvious things like uninstalling/reinstalling drivers, reseating cables and devices, etc -Tried using both the backplane Firewire port and the PCI-Slot Firewire port provided with the mainboard. -Disabled as many integrated peripherals in the BIOS as I could, and tried to free up IRQs, but the BIOS/Windows insists on assigning some different components to the same IRQ. I know this is normal, but could it be the source of my problem? Though I can't seem to change the IRQ settings, even if it is. (The onboard Firewire interface is a subdevice of the ACPI Multiprocessor PC device, according to device manager - For reference) -Installed the Dual-core hotfix from MS for XP Pro SP2, no noticable effect -Changed ASIO Buffer size for the FW410 -Disabled Intel SpeedStep in BIOS -Played around with the other CPU BIOS settings like the halt timer, etc - No avail -Ensured that the audio system wasn't clipping - I'm quite confident that there's nothing wrong with my audio setup outside of the PC -Ensured all connected devices have a common ground line - I don't think this is a ground-loop problem. ------------------------------------- I haven't tried disabling the onboard audio yet, as I really don't see that as an acceptable solution - The FW410 cooperated perfectly with the onboard audio of my old Abit AN8. The Firewire 410 isn't much good for gaming (decreased framerate, no EAX) and the Realtek is sub-par for recording, so using both is a necessity. Additionally, I'm inclined to think that this is some sort of problem related to the Dual Core CPU. I'll try disabling the 2nd core in the BIOS, and I'll try disabling the onboard audio, but I really don't think those are 2 things I should have to do to get stutter-free performance from this system on the desktop or in multimeda. Even if disabling the above fixes the stuttering, it's not an acceptable solution, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know, this is driving me nuts!
The problem persisted in Safe-mode, yes. It seems to be fixed, now, though. I installed new drivers for the onboard sound ( version 1.70 realtek drivers from EVGA) and also reinstalled the chipset drivers from nVidia for the 680i. I don't know which of the those 2 drivers has cured the problem, but my issues seem to be resolved for now.
I suspect it was the chipset drivers. I had the same problem a while back and it turned out that the hard drives were using PIO mode and couldn't keep up with multimedia tasks. Reinstalling the chipset drivers would have fixed that.
Maxtor hard drive? I have the same problem on this machine: tell it to do two things at once and it dies on its ass.
I don't think it's the Maxtor, since the problem's resolved, now. Also, my Music apps run from (and save temporary data to) my Western Digital. I've had the Maxtor for years and never had trouble with it. Mind you, that doesn't keep me from backing everything up just in case..
