Win7 Audio Stack Bug Question

Couscous · 16 Sep 2010 at 11:23

Hi folks,

I'm wondering if anyone is familiar with the Audio Stack problems in Win7 which cause it to BSOD after a while when using hardware accelerated audio?

Basically, my question is this: I have a Creative X-fi Gamer card which works fine apart from getting these intermittent BSOD's when gaming. Is this issue limited to Creative cards or would I get the same thing if I switched to something like a Xonar?

Many thanks

Couscous

yashiro · 16 Sep 2010 at 13:37

It's not an endemic Windows 7 issue. It is probably the drivers for said audio card.

d_brennen · 16 Sep 2010 at 13:39

Duff driver/card. I doubt its a bug in Windows 7

Edit: Ahh, Creative. There's the problem

Broken Hope · 16 Sep 2010 at 13:59

Never had a BSOD on Windows 7 and I use a Creative XFI.

Marsman · 16 Sep 2010 at 14:02

OP, have you tried Daniel K or PAX drivers? Using modified drivers has solved issues for many people. However, they don't always solve the issue, but it's worth giving them a go if you haven't tried.

alex24 · 16 Sep 2010 at 14:02

I've used my Creative X-Fi xtremegamer for 3 years and never had it cause a bluescreen, and not even a hint of an issue on Windows 7. Perhaps the card has developed a fault. How do you know it's the card, and is it under warranty still?

Couscous · 16 Sep 2010 at 20:39

Thanks for the replies. Microsoft have admitted the problem with the audio stack under Win7 with hardware accelerated sound. What happens (as far as I know) is that the stack doesn't empty as it should and gradually fills up with audio data until it overflows causing a BSOD. I only have this happen when playing Lotro as the game swaps around large amounts of audio data.

Going back to my original question: if anyone has encountered this problem and knows if switching to a different card will solve it, I'd be interested to hear your experience. I'm keen to drop my X-fi for one of the Xonar's but it will be pointless if I get the same crashing.

Couscous

hohum · 16 Sep 2010 at 21:27

Couscous said:
Microsoft have admitted the problem with the audio stack under Win7 with hardware accelerated sound.

...? Don't see why they'd admit it was a problem with the audio stack, considering it's entirely software-based since Vista. The only way to achieve hardware-accelerated audio in games on Vista/7 is via OpenAL, which immediately makes it a Creative problem if the game is using that API.

The Xonar cards are great in terms of hardware, but they have dire software support. The only sound card vendor that provides good software support in my opinion is Realtek, but they don't provide chipsets for discrete cards.