Grimes Posted January 4, 2010 Posted January 4, 2010 Alright before you say, "get Creative Alchemy" stop. Heres the situation. I've had windows 7 on two computers. I got an upgrade a month or two in on the previous system. On the older computer I had sound issues from the get-go. Anything that caused a sound was static, distorted, and overall really annoying. I had the exact same drivers installed and the problem wasn't fixed. In order to fix it... I had to set the amount of RAM to just below 4 gb. Its a completely random fix I found out about and it worked. I had it to 3990 mb or something like that. From there the sound was flawless in every game I had played. LO, BS, TF2, Supreme Commander... A bunch of games. Older system specs: AMD X2 4600+ Ati 5770, 4gb DDR400 ram. Creative X-fi ExtremeMusic Soundcard (First Gen) Fast Forward to today. I got an Intel i7 920 at Christmas. 6gb DDR1600, same video card, and kept the X-fi. The sound worked mostly well from the first driver install. It was a little glitchy at times but overall MUCH more stable than the previous computer. Now the problem comes after a few minutes of gaming. The sounds pop and get distorted at times. In every game where the problem has acted up there is a second or two of just static. Generally the sound soon fails completely and I need to reboot to get it back. So far I have had the sound issue in Black Shark and LockOn, both with running Alchemy. And Team Fortress 2 (doesn't need alchemy) Any ideas? The right man in the wrong place makes all the difference in the world. Current Projects: Grayflag Server, Scripting Wiki Useful Links: Mission Scripting Tools MIST-(GitHub) MIST-(Thread) SLMOD, Wiki wishlist, Mission Editing Wiki!, Mission Building Forum
Panzertard Posted January 4, 2010 Posted January 4, 2010 Hm, not really. Just observing. As you said - some others with Creative X-fi has reported stutter / other issues if they run alchemy. Seems like there a few issues with this sound system. Have you tried digging through the pile of alchemy or x-fi here within Problems and Bugs? The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it's open | The important thing is not to stop questioning
104th_Crunch Posted January 5, 2010 Posted January 5, 2010 (edited) Never heard of the of the trick to reduce memory to improve the sound. How did you do it on your older machine? What are the steps? Does it have to be under 4 GB and since you have 6 GB on your new PC you're not willing to try? Sorry I don't have any ideas. I have had 2 main issues with Win7. Lock On crashing after 20 minutes of play with a large mission and sound issues with my Creative Audigy. I also get sound issues with my second sound device, a M-Audio Mobile Pre USB. I dual booted to XP for LO until 2.0 comes out, but the sound issues remain with Win7. I wonder if this sound crap will ever get sorted proper. I guess the blame is with the drivers, Even with normal Win 7 sound (non-gaming) I get issues. One piece of advice I can offer, instead of rebooting your PC to fix the sound, make a shortcut to "services.msc" to the desktop and use it to shutdown and restart the service "Windows Audio". This should have the same effect as a Winblows restart. Edited January 5, 2010 by Crunch
Grimes Posted January 5, 2010 Author Posted January 5, 2010 I found a thread about hacked drivers that someone modified from creative to make em work. So far, so good. I tested with ARMA2, TF2 and Civ4 with ventrilo open the whole time in the background. The modified drivers can be found here. http://forums.creative.com/t5/Sound-Blaster/SB-X-Fi-Series-AuzenUAA-Pack-1-0-09-30-2009/td-p/538552 The right man in the wrong place makes all the difference in the world. Current Projects: Grayflag Server, Scripting Wiki Useful Links: Mission Scripting Tools MIST-(GitHub) MIST-(Thread) SLMOD, Wiki wishlist, Mission Editing Wiki!, Mission Building Forum
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