Darkman wrote:
hmm, might try that , though I'm not sure how much of a burden it might be on the system to have SP3 installed (its a single core 3800+ , so kind of midrange for the Athlon64s)
This comes up more often than it should, but the simple answer is "no burden whatsoever" unless you only have 64-128MB of RAM. For an Athlon64 it shouldn't even be a discussion (benchmark data have shown over the years the measured differences in a variety of applications is often less than 1% (that's usually smaller than the margin error for a given benchmark suite)).
what I will do is update to SP3 first (apparently there is an extra fix for AMD CPUs that had to be applied first) , and see how it runs and whether the problem gets fixed.
if it doesn't fix it, I will connect the onboard audio when I get the extra 1GB of RAM . kind of a pain to drag this case out of the desk compartment (its a cooler master wave, so a bit hefty)
EDIT : Sadly switching to SP3 didn't solve the issue, thankfully I backed up SP2 so I can revert back to it, SP3 isn't bad , but it is a little slower
As far as AMD fixes, the only one I'm aware of for XP applies to dual-core processors (so your Athlon64 wouldn't be affected).
The only thing I thought of in response to the problem is heat - if the Audigy is overheating you can get a static/crackle sound, however rebooting seems to clear the issue so that's confusing. If you have a cheapo heatsink you can stick on the Audigy's main chip that should eliminate heat as a problem (worked for my 2 ZS Platinum years ago). Alternately if you can test with a fan just blowing straight at the Audigy.
Something else that I thought of - can you try with another graphics card? Ideally one that's native AGP (GeForce 6800, GeForce FX, Radeon 9, etc). Where I'm going with this: the X1950 is a bridged card, and an imperfect one at that. I've known some PCIe bridge/multiplier/etc features on cards to cause issues with systems in the past (e.g. GeForce 7950GX2's HSI bridge), so it isn't unreasonable (imho) to test out if there's an issue with the X1950 and this specific configuration.
Random generic troubleshooting ideas:
- Try moving the Audigy to a different PCI slot
- Try running memtest
- If you've only tested the issue to exist in Doom 3, try different games, try re-installing Doom 3
- Make sure NB/SB isn't overheating
- Try a different PSU