Short Game Audio Drop Outs (Motherboard and GPU Audio)

Steven Allick · 15 Mar 2019 at 16:42

I have an ongoing problem with my PC where the game audio will drop out every so often for around a second or two then come back as if nothing happened. Sometimes the pause or loss of audio is very brief sometimes it is longer but usually always in the range of 1-2 seconds. It can happen in any kind of game including 2D ones that don’t stress the system (or at least not the GPU). It is not one specific game I have tried multiple games. The problem typically doesn't start happen immediately, but typically after the first 10-20 minutes or so leading me to wonder if something is overheating, but then it happens on non-demanding games and my temperatures are reasonably low.

As the PC I was having this issue with resides in the living room and is used as a HTPC, I initially believed the issue to be with the graphics card as I was using HDMI audio into my receiver (Yamaha RX-V377 to my TV) or something in the HDMI chain. Well I think I have conclusively proved it isn’t, as I have tried different HDMI cables, I have tried connecting directly to TV HDMI and have tried different ports on the TV/Receiver. I have also tried, in addition to my GTX980TI, a GTX1070 and even an AMD RX480 (in case the issue was Nvidia related). All three GPUs had the exact same problem.

I then tried ignoring the GPU HDMI audio and running a 3.5mm lead straight from the motherboard’s 3.5mm jack to my receiver and it STILL gave the exact same problem!

I am at a real loss with this. The system seems otherwise perfectly stable, I have run stress tests on all parts, which it passes no problem.

I would be extremely grateful for any advice you can give.

System Specs:

AMD Ryzen 2600 (Hex Core 12 Thread)

32GB Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHZ (4x8GB)

Gigabyte G1 Gaming 980TI 6GB

Corsair CX850M 850 Watt PSU

Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe 1.92TB PCIE SSD

ADATA SU800 256GB SSD M.2 (SATA MODE)

Windows 10 Professional (latest update)

craigyhay · 15 Mar 2019 at 21:31

could it be a dpc latency issue? have the latest mobo bios and drivers?

Steven Allick · 15 Mar 2019 at 21:40

craigyhay said:
could it be a dpc latency issue? have the latest mobo bios and drivers?

Do you mean display port connection? I also tried a 3.5mm lead direct from the motherboard audio into my av receiver so that should have taken the graphics card and display out of the equation I would have thought?

I have the latest drivers but have not touched the motherboard BIOS since it already had a Ryzen 2000 series compatible BIOS on it from new (motherboard, cpu and ram is only about 4 months old as I recently upgraded) and supported my CPU out of the box so I didn't think to update it.

craigyhay · 16 Mar 2019 at 08:16

no dpc is deferred procedure call latency and relates to drivers and hardware that takes longer than should to respond that can cause issues with multimedia or under load in games, the bios can influence this if it has a flaw as potentially a flawed driver can,

its prob a long shot if it is the issue tho, but since you have ruled out graphics card and presumaby you have nothing in background intermittently hogging resources is all i can think of that could be.

the only other thing i could think of you could try would be a full format and windows reinstall but if it has been doing it since you first built the system and freshly installed the os, it prob wont help