Hercules Game Theater XP

[JLP]

As I have too much problems with my Uncreative Dead! soundcard under Windows 2000 I'm planing to replace it with Hercules Game Theater XP.
I tried to buy Turtle Beach Santa Cruz but no none sells it in our country. So I think GTXP is the closest to TBSC.
So does anyone have this soundcard? Is it a good replacement? Any problems in Windows 2000?

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Live long and prosper!

[EvilDonnyboy]

Teh GTXP is a great soundcard that mauls SB Live's $hitty a$$. It's better than the Live Platiunum 5.1 in every way, except for the lack of remote control support. It's also superiour to the TB Santa Cruz.

It also has great win2k drivers, so get the card.

[Rags]

Under win2k this card sucks ballz.


My Live! under win2k is not bad, what problems are you having?

Rags

[Joel]

I really like my new Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer 5.1 card and the DeskTop Theater 5.1 DTT2200 Multimedia Speaker System combo that I just bought recently. I can now watch DVDs on my PC with true 5.1 surround sound. Also UT in 5.1 surround sound is awesome.

Joel

[JLP]

I have a lot of problems.
When I install LW3 for Windows 2000 my system is completely unstable. I get a lot of BSODs and crashes.
If I don't install LW and use drivers suplied on Windows 2000 CD then it is better but still it's not stable as without the card installed.
So if i remove the card my system is totally stable and if I put another sound card in that doesn't change. And as soon as I put SB Live in unstable again.
Besides stabiliity problems when there is huge amount of disk activity sound shutters, pops, clicks ... That doesn't happen with other soundcards.
It's my first Creative soundcard and my last one. Before that I had Turtle Beach cards and I had no problems. Also their sound was much richer then that of SB Live.
So I am not buying a Creative Labs soundcard again. I would like to buy another TB soundcard as I had no troubles with them in the past but as they don't sell it in our country I chose Hercules Game Theater XP to replace that shi**y SB Live!

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Live long and prosper!

[Rags]

Yup, rather than suss out the real problem, just rip and tear. It seems to be the norm anymore.

The LW3 does have problem with multiple sounds, but that is being addressed.

Rags

[JLP]

I tried to solve the problem. In fact I'm trying for about 2 months now. But I don't have time to wait for Creative to relese new drivers. LW4 or whatever it will be called should be out in december 2000 and after 4 months it's still not here.
I won't sell the card. I'll be building a second system and I hope it will have no problems there. But for this system Live just doesn't work now.

I'm just asking if anyone is using GTXP with Windows 2000 and if there are any problems or does it work just fine. System specs would be nice too.

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Live long and prosper!

[This message has been edited by JLP (edited 21 April 2001).]

[Rags]

What are your system specs?

Rags

[JLP]

Abit KT7 RAID
AMD thunderbird 900 MHz
512 MB PC 133 CAS 2 RAM
2x IBM DTLA-307030 (ATA100, 7200RPM, 30GB)
1x IBM DHEA-38451 (ATA33, 5400RPM, 8GB)
Matrox MGA G400 (upgraded soon I hope )
3com 3c905b NIC
Adaptec AHA-2940U2W SCSI card
SB Live!
Waitec WT624 CD-R
Pioneer DVD303S DVD
Windows 2000 SP1
and peripherals

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Live long and prosper!

[Rags]

Just as I suspected. The via chipset on your board has known issues running a SBLive. Which drivers for your motherboard have you tried? Which slot do you have your Live in?

I know that the LW3 drivers can work with your setup though.

Rags

[JLP]

I have VIA 4in1 4.29, Higpoint drivers 1.03b for HPT370 (RAID) and the latest BIOS
I tried with swaping cards in my PCI slots but that didn't help.

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Live long and prosper!

[Gurm]

Rags,

Please stop playing devil's advocate. Well, ok you don't have to stop. But at least you have to admit that some people CAN'T fix the problems with the SB Live!, and Creative apparently has no intention of EVER releasing new drivers for it.

Live!ware and SMP just doesn't work. At all. And Live!ware and VIA is a pain to make work, if it can be done at all. There are just too many bugs with Win2k and the Live! to make it worth fixing for many people.

Now that I've said all that - I myself got a Game Theater XP. The drivers for Win2k have been average... which is to say better than the SB Live! and not as good as they could be. There was a new release a couple days ago which has fixed a lot of the outstanding issues.

And the rack is really neat.

And you can get it for around $125 now.

BUT, if you are running a single-chip Via133a, you _might_ be able to fix these issues if you work with Rags.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Rags]

I'm not playing any advocacy, I am just trying to point out that the majority of the problems with the SB Live! are because of busmastering issues with the via chipset. I have been saying this since the live was released but everyone was trying to paint me as a creative advocate, which I am anything but. Now it comes out that via has known about these issues for a LONG time, and it's been an issue ever since the live was released. The fact is that via chipsets don't like hardware that pushes the pci bus to the extreme, and the sblive does this.

I have several issues with my Live under win2k, but my herc. card is hardly any better. It has it's own issues and in my case they are more annoying. I wish that mfrs who continue to produce hardware while win2k was being released would at the very least get some decent drivers that will take advantage of that OS. And when I say this, I am pointing fingers at HP, Lexmark, Umax, Matrox, ATI, Creative, Aureal, etc. I know for a fact that creative is waiting in the wings with new win2k drivers. You may wonder what they are waiting for. Well, if you remember they did say Dec. 2000, well that was the target date for SP2 for win2k. Yes, they are waiting on SP2 to be released. If you want them to release the drivers quicker, then you need to realize that SP2 needs to come first. Don't expect the busmastering issues to be fixed with creative, ms, etc driver updates, expect the fix to come directly from via.

Rags

[JLP]

Gurm you can't blame Rags for helping. But I think I tried everything with Live and current system and had no success. So I decided to buy GTXP and hear from people that actually run it under Windows 2000. So what specs do you have?

BTW Gurm, just checked the GTXP Yahoo! Group members and you are the member, right.

[Rags]

The problem you are seeing is a busmastering problem. You have two devices that interfere with one another, and in this case it's very severe, since one of them is your Hpt. controller. The Hpt. controller is a busmastering hog for what it accomplishes, and when mixed with a via chipset it can cause crashes. My suggestion would be to either not run the hpt driver, get a promise controller, or get a soundcard that doesn't use so much of the pci bus (or you could get a motherboard with a chipset that implements busmastering properly). Another alternative is to wait for via to come up with a solution, which may happen now that the problem has been publicized.

Rags