RocketRaid 1640 + Sound card problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gerald
  • Start date Start date
G

Gerald

Hi,

I’ve just purchased a RocketRaid 1640 controller but have run into a
problem with my sound card.

I have 4 x 80GB SATA hard drives attached to the 1640 in a RAID 5 set.
My sound card is a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy.

Other specs:
OS: Windows XP Pro
CPU: P4 3.2GHz (800FSB)
RAM: 1GB (DDR400)
SM: ABit IC7 MAX

Sound: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy

The problem is whenever the hard drives are reading/writing data the
music playing via the sound card becomes very crackly and distorted
making it impossible to listen to.

I have installed the latest sound card drivers but this has made no
difference. The 1640 Controller driver and BIOS version is 2.0.3.0
(latest).

I've tried increasing the AGP/PCI MHz ratio, tried using the onboard
sound card instead, even tried configuring the hard drivers as ATA66
instead of ATA150. None of which made any difference

Is there anything I can do to stop the RAID controller interfering
with the sound card?

Any help will be most appreciated!

Thank you,
Gerald
 
One thing you might want to do is shift how your cards are placed in the
system, if that's at all possible. You may also want to check with your mobo
manual and move the Audigy to the PCI slot which does not share resources
with any other device in the system. If the problem still occurs, change the
1640 to the "lone slot" and see if that helps.

One other thing which might help is to check the BIOS of your mobo and see
if there is a PCI Delayed Transaction selection, and if so, set it to
enabled.

P.S. On an slightly different note, I have the 1540. If you get a chance,
could you write down the numbers on the big Highpoint chip on the board. I
just want to see if they changed the revision of the chip with the 1640. I
also had some of the problems you speak of, it's all together common with
Creative cards. Eventually it comes down to learning to ignore it - although
things hopefully will change for the better once the next generation of PCI
slots come out.
 
Hi,

The chip information is as follows:

Highpoint
HPT374
0330 T020

I have been speaking to Highpoint tech support about this and they
have confirmed that the problems I am having is a driver issue when
using RAID 5.

They are currently developing a new driver which will get around the
problem of the card using high CPU utilization and causing the sound
card and freezing problems.

Regards,
Gerlad.
 
Hi,

The chip information is as follows:

Highpoint
HPT374
0330 T020

I have been speaking to Highpoint tech support about this and they
have confirmed that the problems I am having is a driver issue when
using RAID 5.

They are currently developing a new driver which will get around the
problem of the card using high CPU utilization and causing the sound
card and freezing problems.

Regards,
Gerlad.
Click to expand...

There might be a problem with the Highpoint driver, and yet it can be
important to remember that you can't necessarily expect other cards to
conform to the needs of the sound card, that it may actually be a
contributing factor or even the whole problem... Even if RAID5 is
causing high CPU utilization, that in itself will not cause sound
problems.... there are many ways a system can be at full load and yet good
sound comes out (for example, games). The issue is more likely one of the
PCI bus utilization, the the Creative card needs a lot. If you have any
of the spatialization features turned on you might try disabling those but
it could easily be necessary to get the Creative card out of the system if
it can't be allowed to dictate if anything else is using a fair amount of
bus time.
 
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