Guide to making ur x-fi not crackle

[Modzilla]

Most Creative soundcard issues are the result of how they work on the PCI bus. Generally speaking, Creative cards are bus hogs. They make good sound but rely heavily on a clean PCI bus.

Yes. The fix: adjust pci latency. Default pci latency for all devices is usually set in the motherboard bios, typically 32. When you install video card drivers, the install program often sets pci latency for the video card at 248. Reduce the latency of the video card so that it is not more than twice the sound card (in multiples of 8). My latency values are 64 for sound and 128 for video.

This has worked for me on the setup in my sig (socket 478/agp). I didn’t think that the video card had any interaction with the pci bus, but apparently it does. I was hearing the crackling when playing games, and changing the pci latency values for the sound card and video card ended the crackling with no other noticeable change in audio/video quality or performance.

Sound card latency can be changed by changing the latency value in the motherboard bios, which will affect all other devices on the bus. Video card latency can be changed by various video card apps. For my x850, I used AtiTool, which has an option to set pci latency for the video card to a specified value at startup. Another method is to use the latest version of powerstrip. Powerstrip lets you set the pci latency for all system devices separately, and can load them at startup.

Edit: shouldn't this thread be in the general hardware/sound cards section rather than the xtreme mods section?