Crappy Audigy drivers

[EvilTypeGuy]

Originally posted by Indiana
For my problems, the "occassional stuttering" issues even amongst Intel users are quite frequently reported, the dropped frames issue (due to the card being a major PCI hog) can be read in fact in nearly EVERY desktop video forum (including, but not restricted to the MURC one). And the AC3 didn't work for any user as it was simply not supported by the drivers (later on there were third party patches for specific DVD players that sometime even worked if you were lucky enough to have the right player and the correct version).

The are 15 systems in the office I work in which are sometimes used for gaming in the evenings, none of them have experienced this issue. One of them has been used for video capture as well. It is within the card's right to 'hogging' the PCI bus. Busmaster PCI cards are allowed to do that. It isn't the cards fault that the System's bus can't keep up. Although due to a bug in VIA's PCI implementation it appears that the card is "hogging" the PCI bus when it really isn't far more often thanks to their lack of 'bus parking'.

Maybe the Audigy is better, but seeing the size of the Creative driver archive I seriously doubt I could be happy with them.

Forum posts are not a valid statistical comparison or justifier. Gamers try to use number of forum posts in technical support forums for a game to justify saying "X product sucks". If this was the case, then Matrox likewise could be panned as a bad product. The reality is that when people don't have problems they don't come to forums commenting on things (typically). So for every complaint/problem you see here, likely there are many that are not having problems at all.

Just keep this in mind...

[az]

ETG, are you a creative PR guy?

Of course it is the card's "right" to use the PCI bus, but other cards manage to sound great (and work) with much less strain put on the PCI bus. Of course it's the right of integrated video chips to use part of the main memory (and it's bandwidth), but AGP graphic solutions are still way superior

AZ

[Fenrir(AVA)]

I have the same problems, and creative blames everything on hardware that I have. All the system crashs that I have had that I submitted to OCA all the results came back for all 4 major crashs as being the creative driver as the cause. There support is zero I might mention to, since they tell you do a process that you already said/emailed that you did and it did not fix the problem. I get skips in mp3 playback but less when I use the Creative PlayCenter (did not have this when I had the GTXP). I also get echoing and crackling in games. SImply issue from what brave tech support guy at creatvie told me was their drivers suck and crash all the time. Only problem is they are not allowed to talk about upcoming driver releases apparently. Until the drivers are fixed I guess I will always have this problem. The biggest joke is they claimed to me that this only happens on SMP system, and this is completly false since I have the Audigy in my Dual AMD system and on my neighbourghs P4 1.5 system and he gets the same deal. The drivers simply suck right now, and it is only for XP that this happens on to.

[Indiana]

The question is: why should a soundcard need to hog the PCI bus like that and consume that much of the available bandwidth?
CD-quality audio runs at 176400 Byte/sec, take 6 channels instead of two, it's still even not overloading an old ISA bus...

[Fenrir(AVA)]

SImple reason the drivers are bad......very very bad.

[EvilTypeGuy]

Originally posted by Indiana
The question is: why should a soundcard need to hog the PCU bus like that and consume that much of the available bandwidth?
CD-quality audio runs at 176400 Byte/sec, take 6 channels instead of two, it's still even not overloading an old ISA bus...

All I can say is, that in my experience I have not had any of the issues that you have mentioned except on a VIA Apollo Pro 133A chipset and and an Older Soyo BX board. Interesting that it has not happened to me except on those boards.

[EvilTypeGuy]

Originally posted by Fenrir(AVA)
SImple reason the drivers are bad......very very bad.

I know of 20+ systems that do not concur with this hypothesis.

[dZeus]

and your conclusion is?

[Jammrock]

The only problem I've had with my Audigy is in software DVD playback. I think WinDVD doesn't do 4 channel right, or something like that. Besides that, no troubles. Using Asus CUSL2-C Black Pearl mobo.

Jammrock

[The PIT]

Well the bus parking is supposed to be fixed in Via's next chipset release so that problem will hopefully go away. looks like I'm going to have fun when I forced to upgrade to XP.
The thing I hate most about Creative drivers is that leave crap all over the place. Had great fun uninstalling them.

[Fenrir(AVA)]

EvilTypeGuy you sound like one of creative's broken record tech support guys.

[EvilTypeGuy]

Originally posted by Fenrir(AVA)
EvilTypeGuy you sound like one of creative's broken record tech support guys.

Well I'm not one of Creative's "broken record tech support guys". However, I did work in tech support at Gateway for a while (what a horrific experience). And I commercial software for a living. So call me crazy, but I guess my glasses are colored differently.

[Fenrir(AVA)]

I have had many problems with the Creative drivers, and all of the problems have been under XP. I am not the only one who says this either, Creative support will say this as well when you corner one of them into a question were they talk or sound completely ridicules with their answer. All in all I am not bashing the card or the drivers, they just need some real improvement.

[Gurm]

Creative's drivers work - on mainstream, stable chipsets. Sadly, the vast majority of PC's now are shipping with VIA chipsets, which are neither "mainstream" or "stable". That may or may not be VIA's fault (blame Intel if you like) but the truth is that there are ZERO problems with SiS chipsets and Creative cards...

- Gurm

[Wombat]

Bull. I'm having these problems with my 745 Ultra.