Poor I/O causing sound to stutter?

Prophet · 1 Sep 2009 at 10:12

If I'm downloading to one HD and playing MP3's from another the MP3's have a slight stutter/crackle.

It happens more with Vista 64 than Windows 7.

Spec is:

AMD X2 4400
4GB RAM
Gigabyte 780G MoBo
3 X HDD's alll SATA
IDE DVD R/W

Is this more likely to be a hardware problem or software issue?

Prophet · 1 Sep 2009 at 11:47

Speakers are Cambridge Audio - Work fine when the PC's not multitasking.

No headphones.

Sound card is onboard jobbie. Again, works fine when not multitasking.

Prophet · 1 Sep 2009 at 12:30

I'll have a look for the drivers later and report back

Prophet · 1 Sep 2009 at 12:57

Will give that a go hohum

Prophet · 1 Sep 2009 at 13:00

djmc0 said:
I think thats the cpu cycling, most onboard sounds chips have the same problem. I'm probably wrong, it also happens when you move your mouse.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-211934_12_0.html

Moving the mouse sometimes makes it worse.

I've also found refreshing a webpage or opening a new page will also cause the sound/mouse to stutter/jerk.

Prophet · 1 Sep 2009 at 19:04

I've ran the DPC latency checker. The system had been running all day downloading a large file. The Latency was off the chart! I disabled the download and it settled down a lot.

I then fired up winamp and the system crashed with the following event log:

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk3\DR3

After rebooting the PC ran fine. I started the download, copied files from and too all my hard drives (to excessively load them) and the latency hardy moved from the green!

So, the problem seems to be there after the PC has been running for several hours and points at a controller problem?

Prophet · 2 Sep 2009 at 09:23

hohum said:
Are you sure it's a controller error, and not one of the hard disks failing? Try some diagnostic software perhaps. Apart from that check your cables, drivers, and perhaps update to latest BIOS if nothing helps.

The disk error was from my Readyboost USB stick. I've removed it and the error has gone.

Left the latency checker running all night. When I can back this morning it was nearly all high reds. I closed uTorrent and it went down to low greens with the odd spike into a med yellow.

Start uTorrent back up and we're in the reds again.

So, if I reboot and have everything running (uTorrent, WinAmp, Copying files etc) it's fine for about 30 minutes before reds start to appear, then it get's worse.

Any ideas?

Prophet · 2 Sep 2009 at 11:40

Bar the Readyboost USB stick I've removed I've only got the Keyboard and Mouse.

The Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H.

Prophet · 2 Sep 2009 at 11:54

hohum said:
Try removing those aswell when the problem is occuring, rule out any external device playing up.

One thing you can try is disabling the Cool N Quiet feature for the processor in the BIOS, as that can cause a latency spike when switching between clockspeeds.

Will give that a go.

Didn't think about C&C! Good idea

Prophet · 13 Dec 2009 at 18:48

Not really. In the end I installed XP and the problem went away.

I then sold the PC and built and i5 system running Win7 x64 perfectly.

Thanks for the info though as I'm sure there will be others with this problem