X-Fi Xtreme-music crackles when scrolling

Cuchulainn · 21 Aug 2007 at 13:52

Heya all,

I have a P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi board with the latest BIOS (1216), Vista Ultimate, a P182 case, E6400 @ 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM, 8800GTS and a lovely x-fi xtreme-music soundcard, which sits in the bottom PCI slot.

Basically, whenever I'm listening to music via my PC (usual app Winamp, although WMP is used too at times) or watching DVDs etc, any movement of the mouse, or rather the scroll wheel of the mouse, results in a loud crackling and breakup of audio.

In fact, after some further testing, it seems like whenever something graphically changes on the screen (whether it be scrolling, a web page loading, windows opening etc), anything at all, this loud and ultra annoying issue occurs.

I've tried reinstalling drivers for the x-fi and for my gfx card - neither helped.

I'm using the Creative official vista drivers CD and we updated the drivers to 2.15.002. GFX-wise I'm using the latest NVidia publically released drivers as per their site.

I'm at my wits end - can anyone help or throw any light on the issue please?

Oddly, I've only just re-installed Vista as I've fitted a new HDD. The installation before, with exactly the same board, drivers etc etc, worked fine.

Perhaps I should reformat and try again?

Cuchulainn · 22 Aug 2007 at 10:06

Tried a total reformat - still no joy.

Cuchulainn · 22 Aug 2007 at 16:15

After trying absolutely everything - and thanks so much for the kind help given in this thread too - with no joy I've finally fixed it.

What sorted it for me was an increase in voltage to the PCI chipset in the BIOS - only slight increase mind - but a definite removal from the "AUTO" setting to a defined voltage.

If anyone wants to give it a try I can reboot and take a look at the voltages I've used for you?

Cuchulainn · 22 Aug 2007 at 16:27

Okey dokey. This is where I'm up to at the moment.

I'm going to try dropping each setting a notch or two in turn until the problem re-occurs. Obviously then I should know which voltage sorts it. I suspect though it'll be the ICH chipset that's the daddy!

Anyway :

PCI Latency is 32 at the moment btw.

FSB : 1.4v
NB Vcore : 1.45v
SB VCore : 1.60v

The above are probably inconsequential. However :

ICH Chipset 1.215v

Is, I suspect, the crucial adjustment.

I'm going to do a little testing now. Perhaps it's all coincidence. But after trying literally everything, this seems to be the only thing that has resolved the issue. So it's worth investigating I reckon.

Oh and um obviously take care when fiddling with voltages with regard to temperatures etc, ahem

Cuchulainn · 22 Aug 2007 at 16:36

mrk said:
Cheers! Do you know if the ICH voltage is the same on all boards btw?

Oooo I'm not sure about that one mate. I only have three settings on my P5b Deluxe Wi-fi - AUTO, 1.057v and 1.215v.

The mobo uses the Intel P965 chipset.

Cuchulainn · 24 Aug 2007 at 20:08

This remains a little bit of a mystery really.

I tested extensively yesterday and couldn't repeat the issue.

The NB VCore seemed to have been the only thing out of the BIOS settings that would come close to repeating the problem. For me it has to stay at 1.45v.

Everything else is set to AUTO (apart from of course the CPU vcore as I'm overclocking).

So it's a total mystery.....

I'm just glad it sodded off before I splashed out another £100+ on a different soundcard.