k7s5a pci sound problem?

[erwin nijland]

I have a k7s5a,
1.4 ghz amd
512 int mb
winxp

One year ago i had a problem with a 32mb stealth pci video card.
Some games had great sound others have a scrambled noise.

We changed several things back than, no luck.
After being fed up with it we used a simple agp card and all was fine but i couldn't play new games.

Last saturday i finaly got a 64mb geforce sparkle pci
And again i had the same problem.

It wasn't an irq problem because even with the onboard soundcard it reacted the same.

Some games are fine, not neccesary old simple games.
A simple game like i.e. the sims, red alert 2 have bad sound while a game like c&c renegade works fine.

This drives me nuts, i tried several changes in the bios but i'm stuck.

Hopefully someone can help me..

[sKiT]

it looks as if your using the onboard sound from the motherboard. If you want a better gaming environment , you really need to get a pci 3d sound card such as a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. It's a great card for the $$$ or even a SB live card if your on a budget.


Welcome to TechIMO

[erwin nijland]

no i've disabled the onboard and removed all the drivers allready/
tested it with a pci soundcard - same result.

i've seen loads of issues allready with this motherboard and pci videocards.

i'll paste this from another board:

Re: ECS K7S5A Sound problem in Win2k Hello 

Yes you are exactly right.The Ecs board will DEFINITELY cause sound 
problems ( most people describe it as a crackling noise) when coupled
with a pci video card..The 07\24 bios (1st release) is the only bios that works correctly..If you only use win98 you can flash to this bios and the
problem will be gone..However it has a problem with floppy corruption when used with w2k or XP. If you plan to use 98 only and want this bios
you can download it from me..If you need w2k or XP the best bet is to use
an AGP video card. The link below has a file call allbios.zip which has all
released bios.rom's..

i'll look further and post the solution here if i find it.

[Gait_Keeper]

here's a nice link I got from a thread here at techimo a while ago

K7S5A

[pmac57]

I have the same board by PC-Chips, the only "fix" is to use an AGP video card. Be sure to look up threads and comments before purchasing your next board, it will save you the headache of buying poorly made items.

[erwin nijland]

also found this:

The Board is known of having some OnBoard Sound problems with PCI Graphics Cards .
Solution ? > Maybe a better Bios that lets play with PCI Latency Timer .
Good Forum for the K7S5A at www.ocworkbench.com > ECS-Forum

[jerrygarcia]

You might look for PeterM on the boards here. I consider him the expert on the K7S5A board.

[erwin nijland]

those links have loads of info but no clear info on the pci video card with sound problems issue

[Peter M]

The problem is neither the board nor its sound unit. Plain and simply, having the VGA chip on the PCI bus eats too much system I/O bandwidth. As soon as there's a serious amount of traffic toward the PCI VGA, all other things will be stalled out. This normally doesn't matter, but with realtime streams like audio data, the user will notice the delays.

Solution: Use an AGP graphics card. (Later BIOSes for the K7S5A reserved a little more bandwidth to the sound unit. That makes it better, but it'll never be perfect - and it makes the PCI VGA slower, of course.)

[erwin nijland]

ok i will change my drive into a agp one.
it's crap but not worth it to waste time