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friend needs help

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 1:56 pm
by goodguy
Hi. I have a AMD gigabyte ga-ma78gm-s2h mobo (£70) socket am2+, and an Intel abit in9 32x max (£150) socket lga775, My pc is used for home theatre.

Installing a xonar dx2 soundcard (£100) it sounded way better in the abit mobo (intel) rather than the gigabyte (AMD). The same was true of soundblaster elite pro soundcard (£250)

Does anyone know why this might be. I was told that the soundcard should sound the same in both mobos and that more expensive mobos just have better overclocing facilities and cpu features.

Are gigabyte mobos crap?

Thank you

Re: friend needs help

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 4:21 pm
by XstollieX
Gigabyte boards are far from crap. Are you confident that you don't have any driver conflicts in your system? Do you have the latest drivers installed?

Re: friend needs help

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 6:58 pm
by ibleet
XstollieX wrote:Gigabyte boards are far from crap.
Indeed! Gigabyte boards are my board of choice, followed by Asus. There must be an underlying issue there.

AMD is the problem. Put that sound card in an Gigabyte 775 board and it will sound great. :finga:

Re: friend needs help

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 7:13 pm
by XstollieX
ibleet wrote: AMD is the problem. Put that sound card in an Gigabyte 775 board and it will sound great. :finga:
No hating on the AMD's Mine makes a great back up to the I7 :lol:

Re: friend needs help

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 2:44 am
by goodguy
Hi. Thanks guys for the email responses and the information contained. It is very much appreciated.
Is it AMD that's the problem?

I've installed all the drivers from the Gigabyte AMD installation cd, and gone into device manager, no yellow question marks, also updated from the gigabyte website.

Still the Abit mobo sounds better, even my graphics card looks better.

The only other thing i did notice is that the Abit was sucking some serious juice. When i placed my hand over the psu fan (700w) it was blasting out hot air, with the Gigabyte the air was cold and very little of it.

That's the thing about the Gigabyte, it runs cool and with less noise which is good for my home theatre, probably saves on the electricity. It's a minor consideration though.

I've just got in the new Gigabyte Amd ga-ma785gpm-ud2h had to import it from china, in the hope that the very latest 785 chipset, ultra durable 3 etc may make some difference. Will let you know how i get along with it.

My thinking is that Gigabyte claims this mobo has very high quality parts, which may distort the sound less than other mobos, fingers crossed, its just a guess though.

If it does not work out and i change mobos again what do you think i should go for. Very interested in the comment from xstolliex for switching from Amd to Intel, have you tried this yourself xstolliex?

Obviously the lga775 socket is on the way out, should i still go for a 775 or update to one of the new sockets

Thank you. John.

Re: friend needs help

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 6:50 am
by XstollieX
First thing I would do is download the drivers from the manufacturers websites. The drivers that are released on the driver cd are old releases and the new drivers fix alot of issues. As for the issue if amd is the problem. No the I highly doubt that using an AMD chip is the problem. I have a strong suspicion that it is a driver issue. Did you disable the onboard sound? Check those items and let me know.

Re: friend needs help

Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 1:21 pm
by ibleet
Sorry I was j/k about AMD being the issue. :mrgreen:

Now if your problem was gaming fps related, then that would be highly possible, and even probable.

Re: friend needs help

Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 2:58 am
by goodguy
Hi Guys. Will switching to a full size atx board improve things, i did hear that micro atx boards can cause interference as the components are cramped together, or is this

something minor.

I nipped down to the local pc shop and the guy was talking about irq or something like that, or was it dma. It was all way over my head, something about using

irq assignement 9, 10 or 11. At that point i was losing the will to live, life flashing before my eyes, managed to stagger out of the shop and made it down to the local pub.

After a few pints felt a lot better. AHHH!!!!!!!!