Motherboard not with VIA chipset?

shevalier wrote on 2025-07-18, 10:48:

Motherboard not with VIA chipset?

Correct. The motherboard has Intel X58 chipset

xtreger wrote on 2025-07-18, 11:21:

shevalier wrote on 2025-07-18, 10:48:

Motherboard not with VIA chipset?

Correct. The motherboard has Intel X58 chipset

Then the advice on BIOS options from the Pentium 3 and VIA Apollo 133T era is unlikely to suit you.
I would start by testing Audigy on another computer.
Not in the sense of "corresponding to the time", but with a native PCI support.
Like LGA775/AM3+ with Windows XP-11

xtreger wrote on 2025-07-18, 10:28:

I have an Audigy 2 ZS - in a few use cases, it starts behaving abnormally after a bit of usage. Behavior: The sound (e.g. game s […]
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I have an Audigy 2 ZS - in a few use cases, it starts behaving abnormally after a bit of usage.
Behavior: The sound (e.g. game sound or music recording in DAW, etc.) will cut off abruptly, then there will be a static like noise, the very end of the windows 98 startup sound will play randomly, and the normal sound (what should've been playing under normal circumstances) will cut in and out (mostly out).
Examples:
1. In the game Hitman Contracts if any level of sound hardware acceleration is enabled, the sound will play just fine for, say 20 seconds. But after a point the above behavior will start - a trigger point that I've noticed is when I go to an area where multiple sound effects from different sources are supposed to be playing at once. Like rain sound, NPC dialog, truck sound, etc. all at once.
2. In a DAW when recording instrument via a USB instrument cable, it records fine for max 2 minutes, after which that abrupt sound cutoff and noise behavior will start again.
3. While playing DOOM, only after a few seconds of gameplay with both MIDI music and game effects playing, this same behavior starts.

I'm really at my wits' end on what to do about this. I've tried both VxD and WDM drivers, I've tried Joseph Joestar's guide, the unofficial VOGONS drivers - every combination seems to give this issue. If anyone has had the same problem or knows why this happens, would really appreciate any help or pointers.

Is the PCI running out of spec at all frequency-wise or is there other overclocking going on?

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-07-18, 12:30:

xtreger wrote on 2025-07-18, 10:28:

I have an Audigy 2 ZS - in a few use cases, it starts behaving abnormally after a bit of usage. Behavior: The sound (e.g. game s […]
Show full quote

I have an Audigy 2 ZS - in a few use cases, it starts behaving abnormally after a bit of usage.
Behavior: The sound (e.g. game sound or music recording in DAW, etc.) will cut off abruptly, then there will be a static like noise, the very end of the windows 98 startup sound will play randomly, and the normal sound (what should've been playing under normal circumstances) will cut in and out (mostly out).
Examples:
1. In the game Hitman Contracts if any level of sound hardware acceleration is enabled, the sound will play just fine for, say 20 seconds. But after a point the above behavior will start - a trigger point that I've noticed is when I go to an area where multiple sound effects from different sources are supposed to be playing at once. Like rain sound, NPC dialog, truck sound, etc. all at once.
2. In a DAW when recording instrument via a USB instrument cable, it records fine for max 2 minutes, after which that abrupt sound cutoff and noise behavior will start again.
3. While playing DOOM, only after a few seconds of gameplay with both MIDI music and game effects playing, this same behavior starts.

I'm really at my wits' end on what to do about this. I've tried both VxD and WDM drivers, I've tried Joseph Joestar's guide, the unofficial VOGONS drivers - every combination seems to give this issue. If anyone has had the same problem or knows why this happens, would really appreciate any help or pointers.

Is the PCI running out of spec at all frequency-wise or is there other overclocking going on?

You mean whether there's overclocking in BIOS settings? Yeah it's enabled. The base freq of the CPU is 3.33 GHz but I'm running it at 4 GHz. And in the "M.B. intelligent tweaker" section of the BIOS, I've selected the "Turbo" preset (3 presets being standard, turbo, extreme). Do you think this overclocking may be causing issues?

EDIT: I set the BIOS settings to fail-safe defaults and changed "Turbo" to "Standard" - still the same issue...

shevalier wrote on 2025-07-18, 11:55:

Then the advice on BIOS options from the Pentium 3 and VIA Apollo 133T era is unlikely to suit you. I would start by testing Aud […]
Show full quote

xtreger wrote on 2025-07-18, 11:21:

shevalier wrote on 2025-07-18, 10:48:

Motherboard not with VIA chipset?

Correct. The motherboard has Intel X58 chipset

Then the advice on BIOS options from the Pentium 3 and VIA Apollo 133T era is unlikely to suit you.
I would start by testing Audigy on another computer.
Not in the sense of "corresponding to the time", but with a native PCI support.
Like LGA775/AM3+ with Windows XP-11

Sorry but what do you mean by native pci support? Because the motherboard that I have, does have a PCI slot. Is having a PCI slot not sufficient to have native PCI support?

xtreger wrote on 2025-07-18, 15:42:

Sorry but what do you mean by native pci support? Because the motherboard that I have, does have a PCI slot. Is having a PCI slot not sufficient to have native PCI support?

As far as I understand, the X58 works in tandem with the ICH10, which has this PCI port.
Some motherboards have a PCI connector, but the chipset itself does not support it. In such cases, support is provided via a PCIe-PCI bridge from another manufacturer (i.e. Asmedia) , not through the chipset.

Seeing it works for some amount of time it could be thermally related as well, either a bad solder joint or a problem in one of the IC's.

You are probably at the point where I'd recommend testing the card in another PC, to see if you can come to something conclusive.

Sometimes it can be a pain ...I have an old Yamaha ISA sound card that misbehaves in one overclocked system in a similar way (sound dropouts, cuts to random noise etc) while two others that are virtually the same have no issues. Yet, the same card behaves fine if tested with the same tests in other systems, even if I overclock the bus it sits on, go figure.

Hmm can you swap the Ram around/ have other ram to try? Unreliable memory at an address that only the sound card uses could also lead to issues

bertrammatrix wrote on 2025-07-18, 19:23:

Seeing it works for some amount of time it could be thermally related as well, either a bad solder joint or a problem in one of […]
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Seeing it works for some amount of time it could be thermally related as well, either a bad solder joint or a problem in one of the IC's.

You are probably at the point where I'd recommend testing the card in another PC, to see if you can come to something conclusive.

Sometimes it can be a pain ...I have an old Yamaha ISA sound card that misbehaves in one overclocked system in a similar way (sound dropouts, cuts to random noise etc) while two others that are virtually the same have no issues. Yet, the same card behaves fine if tested with the same tests in other systems, even if I overclock the bus it sits on, go figure.

Hmm can you swap the Ram around/ have other ram to try? Unreliable memory at an address that only the sound card uses could also lead to issues

I think the card is fine, because I have another Audigy 2 (not ZS). And it gives the exact same problem. i.e. both Aud2 and Aud2ZS give the same issue, so that'd mean the cards are fine and it's a config issue. I have another RAM stick with me, I'll try swapping it for the current RAM sticks in my PC..

xtreger wrote on Yesterday, 07:13:

I'll try swapping it for the current RAM sticks in my PC..

And just by chance I had this question.
Aren't you trying to run Windows 98 on a 100500 multi_core processor with 100500 GB of RAM?

P.S. At one time I had Core 2 DUO E8400 + Aureal Vortex MX300 in my signature. But even Windows 2000 couldn't solve the problems with the sound card driver, which was written for single-threading.

shevalier wrote on Yesterday, 07:21:

And just by chance I had this question. Aren't you trying to run Windows 98 on a 100500 multi_core processor with 100500 GB of R […]
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xtreger wrote on Yesterday, 07:13:

I'll try swapping it for the current RAM sticks in my PC..

And just by chance I had this question.
Aren't you trying to run Windows 98 on a 100500 multi_core processor with 100500 GB of RAM?

P.S. At one time I had Core 2 DUO E8400 + Aureal Vortex MX300 in my signature. But even Windows 2000 couldn't solve the problems with the sound card driver, which was written for single-threading.

Yep my processor is a Xeon which has multiple cores and threads and all that. Maybe I should try disabling the multithreading in the BIOS too?

And all cores accept one
And 0.5gb ram (or 2 with patches)
And , if you realy want to use Win98, get some simpler PC

I'd be testing the card in another machine.

Maybe caps are dead.
Maybe it needs a wash.