Conflicts between Audigy 2 and PCI ADSL modem?

[DsW]

Hey guys,

I'm having a weird problem with my PCI ADSL modem that only seems to occur when my Audigy 2 card is also installed.

The connection seems to disconnect occasionally, and reconnect a few seconds later. This happens maybe 2 or 3 times an hour and is very annoying.

I contacted the manufacturer of the modem (MRi) and their technical support said the usual stuff (make sure drivers are up to date etc.) but this didn't make any difference. They then suggested removing Audigy 2 and lo-and-behold the modem seemed to behave ok (no disconnections). I then tried putting the Audigy 2 back in but switching the PCI slots (putting the modem in the Audigy's slot and vice versa) but this didn't make any difference either. Totally stumped.


The modem is an MRi PCI ADSL modem (Conexant hardware).
The only other card in the machine is a Connect3D Radeon 9700np, but as I say the modem appears to work perfectly when the Audigy 2 is removed.

Motherboard is Asus P4P800 Deluxe.

Any help would be very much appreciated!


cheers,
dave

[luke313]

Try moving the audigy or the modem to a different slot, ie totally different to the two you have tried so far. May work???

[Austin]

Otherwise curse Creative as they are so full of themselves and often offer mediocre hw with awful buggy sw. Do try to ascertain the soundcard as the culprit but IMHO sell that Creative and get yourself a Fortissimo, Philips Edge or Sonic Fury sound card.

[directhex]

Austin for president!

seriously though, if it's a Via based motherboard blame the Audigy 2. Or the Via board, but i don't like Creative.

--jo

[SilentDeath]

creative r evil bastards but not as bad as nvidia (they make quality stuff but i dislike there marketing tactics a lot) and very far from via, still they have time to get there

sell the audididy and get a nice nf2 mobo with soundstorm

[Austin]

VIA are well known for their awful PCI implimentation, esp in the pre-8235 (southbridge) days. 8235 was used on KT400 but anything older is almost certain to have 'faulty' PCI esp with PCI cards which hog/demand bandwidth like all of Creative's offerings (most notably the Live). Even if you have the (reportedly) fixed 8235 southbrudge you may very well find Creative's drivers simply detect a VIA chipset and actually make matters worse. Anyway you can try a few things, top bets are ...

1. VIA PCI LATENCY PATCH:
http://www.networking.tzo.com/net/software/
http://www.georgebreese.com/net/soft...s/faqvl019.htm

2. BIOS SETTINGS:
"PCI Latency (Timer)" is usually set to 32 cycles, try 64 or even 128. This is essentially the time a given PCI device can hold the PCI bus for before relinquishing control.

3. Uninstall everything related to the soundcard, then reinstall the basic driver only, even just to see if it works. Perhaps point Windows to the folder which contains the driver (INF file) under 'Add new hardware'.

You may want to look into mobo drivers or settings (esp within Windows) as IIRC some Creative drivers can somehow override the default settings. You should find something like SiSoft Sandra can tell you the current setting being used.

[DsW]

Thanks for your suggestions, Austin.

The motherboard is an Asus P4P800 Deluxe (Intel chipset), and therefore the VIA latency patch won't do anything.

I will however, check out the BIOS settings then do a bit of re-installing of drivers as you suggest.

BTW - getting rid of the Audigy 2 or changing the motherboard is not an option!

cheers,
dave

[Rabs]

One other thing you could try, put the Audigy in the pci slot that shares its irq with the gfx card and the modem in a slot where the irq isn't shared with anything else (or at least something like a USB port).

Ive had tons of dealings with via mb's etc, the above worked for me.

If you have a PCI latency setting in the BIOS, set it to 64, that may help also.

[Austin]

Someone reminded me in a nother thread, you could also explore other BIOS settings. For example 'Fast Writes' is to do with your AGP but can affect PCI devices, this could have been enabled by Windows sw (esp latest drivers) but is more commonly controlled from the BIOS. Worth checking out.

[DsW]

I think I've (finally) found the source of the problem.

The onboard firewire controller was using the same IRQ as the modem, so I switched the PCI slot that the modem was using.

Curiously enough, this didn't solve the problem. Next step was to disable the firewire controller in the bios.. and voila!

Will probably never use firewire, but if I need to then I can use the port built into the Audigy 2 itself.

Thanks for all your suggestions people!

cheers,
dave

[Rabs]

np, thats what were here for