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**Wombat** · 20 November 2002, 17:15

I know it's shocking, but I'm not about to blame Creative here. It's usually very hard to make stuff like drivers forward-compatible when new features are forced upon them.

**DGhost** · 20 November 2002, 18:01

Wombat, the problem with this is that these exact same issues have existed since the original SB Live card when used in SMP systems, and they still have not been fixed.

I can remember seeing this problem almost 3 years ago with my SMP system.

This is not a new problem at all... go search through the forums at 2cpu.com and you'll see what i'm talking about...

**Kooldino** · 21 November 2002, 23:15

It's reasons like this why I don't run creative hardware anymore. They don't place nice.

**Gurm** · 22 November 2002, 06:16

Funny, I _NEVER_ had _ANY_ creative card do this, despite having SEVERAL SMP systems.

Frankly, I think it's a relatively small percentage of people who experience this issue.

- Gurm

**Kooldino** · 22 November 2002, 10:08

Originally posted by Gurm
Funny, I _NEVER_ had _ANY_ creative card do this, despite having SEVERAL SMP systems.

Frankly, I think it's a relatively small percentage of people who experience this issue.

- Gurm

It usually is a small # of ppl, but the fact that the problem is there is bad enough.

A good friend of mine lost all of his data thanks to the whole 686b and creative SBLive! issue.

**Gurm** · 22 November 2002, 10:27

Yeah but was that REALLY a Creative problem? Other sound cards had the same issue, as did RAID controllers, video cards, etc.

It was VIA's fault.

- Gurm

**KeiFront** · 22 November 2002, 10:30

Creative SMP don't think so.
(It certainly wasn't in my duallie)

**DGhost** · 22 November 2002, 11:42

Originally posted by Gurm
Funny, I _NEVER_ had _ANY_ creative card do this, despite having SEVERAL SMP systems.

Frankly, I think it's a relatively small percentage of people who experience this issue.

- Gurm

Thats nice. go over to 2cpu.com with that attitude and see where it gets you.

This is an old issue and while it doesn't affect everyone (personally i've only seen it a half dozen times on my own systems, and it wasn't affecting my last system).

I have seen the issue personally though, so just because in your _INFINATE_ experience you've never seen it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

**MultimediaMan** · 22 November 2002, 12:15

Gurm, you are in the minority (And Very Lucky): I've been screwing around with SMP full time for three years now and have thrown a LOT of hardware through various systems to see how they work.

The sound cards that I personally know of that have the fewest issues in SMP are the TBSC and the Acoustic Edge (with the latest drivers).

The original SBLive (doesn't matter which actual ASIC) suffered from sound corruption and static badly in most SMP systems, Intel, VIA or AMD-based.

Audigy displayed some annoying issues in XP with or without SMP and the Audigy 2, while working better in XP, is no different in HT-SMP systems: static and dropouts are common.

RAID controllers and SMP? They go together like Cookies and Milk...There have been some issues with certain chipsets and some RAID controllers but this is a Mobo chipset issue most of the time.

I do know the Promise SX6000-AMD MPX chipset bug is largely resolved but it took some work to do so.

**Gurm** · 22 November 2002, 14:16

No no. Don't get me wrong - I've seen this happen.

On single-chip systems as well as SMP systems.

And the early creative livewares were HORRIBLE at SMP (newer UDA drivers are much better).

In fact, the newest Creative driverset (which comes with Audigy2 but which is easily modified to work with Audigy1 and/or Live!) is GREAT - no more bloat, finally have a volume/balance/EQ app in the tray, stuff is easy to disable, and full functionality in a smaller package... with nicer sound.

I'm simply saying that it wasn't JUST SMP that had this problem. It was VIA chipsets in general...

- Gurm

P.S. Anyone who wants to get in touch with me... I'd be happy to help you step into the new Creative drivers... Audigy2 or no.

**Indiana** · 22 November 2002, 15:07

Originally posted by Gurm
Yeah but was that REALLY a Creative problem? Other sound cards had the same issue, as did RAID controllers, video cards, etc.

It was VIA's fault.

- Gurm

No. My SBLive creates slight stuttering in Win2k with an Intel BX mainboard, an AMD760 one and a VIA KT133 one. Interestingly enough the problems were most apparent with the AMD760, the VIA and the Intel BX were about the same.

Oh and this was only if you installed Creatives Win2k drivers, if you used the built in drivers in Win2k, the problems nearly fully vanished....

**Gurm** · 22 November 2002, 17:01

Which version of Creative's drivers?

The Creative-supplied ones that are currently available from Windows Update completely cure this problem.

Microsoft doesn't write the drivers, they just pimp them out.

- Gurm

**Indiana** · 22 November 2002, 17:18

That were the drivers that came with the initial release of Win2k. They had no support for EAX,...
And all Win2k drivers that Creative released in the time I had the damn f*cking card were utter crap.

**UtwigMU** · 22 November 2002, 18:43

http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?q=Y&a=tpc&s=50009562&f=77909774&m=9350922835&p=1

There are workarounds

Originally posted by IceStorm
t's not a matter of "what works and what doesn't", it's a matter of working around the lack of SMP-awareness. Affinity filters and .exe modifiers allow one to lock down a driver or process to a single CPU. I'm not going to let the benefits of SMP/HT go to waste because certain comapanies don't wish to bother with SMP testing. :-)

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