Realtek HD audio crackling

Nope, no point in buying an SLI machine if you're not gonna run SLI! Will see what the vendors can come up with, they might be able to swap my parts out to a chassis that behaves better.

 

well, i thought i'd update this.

the atheros is working fine but comes with latency issues of its own. it will shoot up the latency meter to like 3-4k (barely red) for a few seconds every few minutes. not quite like the intel that has 1 spike every 5-6 seconds but meh.

not the interesting part.... im still getting the BIG spikes which lead back to the directx and/or display drivers..... but they also go away when the wifi is disabled.

conclusion: it wasnt the intel wifi, its ANY wifi. motherboard problem? dunno, dont think so. waiting for a bios update.

 

News: I updated to the 195.55 beta; there is absolutely no crackling or latency spikes, and I didn't have to edit Powermizer to achieve this.

Try it out and report your results.

 

I still have them but they are significantly less often. Actually they rarely happen now.

 

Same problem here.

So is it ok to install a desktop driver on a laptop?

 

Generally it's ok. But we are talking about the 195.55 drivers for notebooks which you can download from Nvidia's website.

 

Found the notebook driver. My mistake.

 

Haha, my laptop typically would already be away with Kobalt looking at the machine, drivers and the raid setup, or I would have tried this.

Still they seem to be making progress as they stated my RAID setup was getting the issue, but a clean single drive install of Win7 wasn't, so possible driver or RAID bug, they weren't sure as yet and still testing.

Will point them at this driver incase it helps!

Alex

 

Seems I spoke too soon. I woke up this morning, and the spikes were back every few minutes. There are no powermizer settings in the mobile driver, so I'm going back to 195.39, bummer.

 

any of you tried the new bios?

 

You mean 0.19 ?

 

yeap (19char)

 

Yeap, I flashed my machine with it but doesn't change anything. Still the same problem.

 

bah just flashed it, same cr ap , any new EC updates?

 

eeehh? um, I just make sure that I run that IAAnotif.exe back again.

I read on this before:
http://www.pcnineoneone.com/process/iaanotif.html

and I noticed I should not disable that process.

 

I don't know...It seems the problem worsened after 195.55 installation.

 

any way to sticky this? I'm interested in seeing how this progresses, my squeaks and pops are getting more random...

 

update from me:

i swapped the wifi card over to the intel robson memory pciexpress slot. it worked fine, but the spikes are still there.

i swapped back the intel 5300 and waiting for an EC update. it has GOT to be a compatibility/communication issue.

 

I hear them much less often when I plug in SB X-Fi Go. Seems like it has something to do with the sound card to some degree after all.

 

OOPs 12 pages of replies haha, quite an achievement for me already XD, anyways, also shows how ubiquitous the problem is, and just a quite update: I got the latest driver to settle much less crackling. it's still bugging though, hoping a certain miracle will come with a certain driver update!!

 

Hi guys, if you're using 190.38 or later GPU drivers, see if this helps you, I had my machine back yesterday so have had a chance to try a few things:

Go into Nvidia control panel, manage 3d settings and the global tab. Scroll down to Power Management Mode and change it to fixed maximum performance rather than adaptive.

This hasn't cured my stuttering, but it has reduced the severity (they happen a little less often, but the stuttering isnt so harsh/long). If you're running Aero it should lock your GPU at 3d clocks (low load so temps arent massively higher,on my machine anyway)

 

I noticed a slight difference when doing this.

 

Aye, its not fixed but it lessened the severity of the incidents in my experience, and made them more manageable. I've got Kobalt Computers investigating this issue with Nvidia and the likes with my model at the moment, if they come up with anything, I'll forward it on.

 

Switching off Powermizer via the registry seems to be the only sure fire method, for me. The higher idle temps are a fair trade off in my eyes.

 

Problem is, the SLI powermizer registry tweaks only clock freeze one card, the newer drivers allow you to set Power Management Mode to maximum performance (fixed clocks), which sets both cards to 3d clocks however doesnt eliminate the stuttering (Still polling perhaps?)

This is definately GPU driver, or related as running without VGA drivers eliminates the DPC spikes on this model.

Hmmm, I wonder if changing this option and performing the powermizer disabling registry tweak on top would sort it out...

 

i still have the spikes with powermizer disabled

less so but still there

the only way to completely get rid of them is when i disable the wifi card.. but thats not an option for me

roll on EC update

i wonder if any of the vendors can chime in..

 

Just my two cents:


I've had this problem from the beginning ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=359731) ever since I upgraded from Sager's own 176.02 drivers for my 9800M GTX, but the latency spikes (and they can be substantial) *only* occur for me upon awakening from sleep, if they occur at all (and accordingly they disappear when i restart). I also agree it's got to be a Nvidia-Realtek thing, as I've tried numerous Realtek drivers (currently on 6.0.1.5919) with the old sager display drivers and so far as I can tell no latency. Only when I started using any newer display drivers, did all the problems start.

The caveat to this is that currently I'm on sager's own 187.62 and the problem remains. Granted it supposedly for the GTX 280M (I have NO IDEA why the ba$tards wont optimize any drivers for the *older* cards - christ is my 9800M old already??), but since it's from sager I figured all would be good. No go.

I haven't tried the powermizer thing, but I'm monitoring the clocks with gpu-z and I can't seem to match the spikes to a change in frequency, but who knows.

We are certainly not the only ones having similar issues (google to your hearts content), so nvidia and realtek need to start figuring out what the heck is up.

 

well well, i'm happy to report that i solved 99% of the latency spikes by...

......

*drumroll*











*drumroll*






by setting the wireless adapter option to maximum power savings


thats really wierd, but with powermizer off and max power savings on the wifi, i've been spikeless ALL day.

 

I have this option all my life as "Maximum power saving" on M860ETU and spikes are always my bests friends.

 

Hi i have been keeping track of this thread for a while as i had the exact same problems, and i have just solved my problems completely and thought i owuld register and share my solution.

I installed the Realtek drivers 2.21 for Vista o.o That's it, solved my problem completely, the main difference between the 2.21 drivers and the new windows 7 drivers, is that the old 2.21 doesn't support the Bass Booster effect thing So as long as you can live without it, it solves the problem or did for me at least

EDIT: googled it and it seems other people who are having problems with Realtek crackling and windows 7 64-bit, and have also found the solution in both drivers 2.21 and 2.22 Also the powermizer method didn't work too well for me :/ It made it better, but ultimately i still heard the crackling

EDIT EDIT: here is a link to the 2.21 drivers if anybody is interested
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Realtek-HD-Audio-2.21-Driver-download-2240.html

 

the 2.21 drivers don't work either. i just tried them

its windows 7 thats the problem.

 

same. I think it helped tiny bit though, but since I installed them my hotkeys quit working

 

My Win7 updater installed some 2-nd version of "Realtek - Network - Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller (Nov,2009)".
First version was installed same way at 1.11.2009.

Playing with browsing and music right now, all ok.
Probably it's temporary luck, but who knows, maybe it's a real fix.
Hmm, doubts.

 

Is the problem really limited to win7 x64? I had crackling problem with this laptop since xp sp3.

 

No its not just WIn7, I had the issue whilst testing under Vista64 as well, there are plenty of things that can cause the issue!

 

i think it's dx11 thats causing the problems.

i had vista x64 with no issues, but as soon as i installed win 7 the problems started. even while running in compatability mode with the vista drivers the crackling is still there. the only difference is windows 7. the internet is full of people who have developed this problem since installing windows 7.

 

For me it seems, that the last Win 7 updates. I think 2-3 days ago, solved to issue. No more DCP latency spikes!

 

What drivers/updates were they?

 

They were some critical updates from Microsoft via Software Update. I don't remember. It's hard to say which ones, but for me the issue is just gone. Maybe is also related to the lower voltages that I am using on my video card now...

 

Odd I've had nothing but C++ and defender updates the last few days, and checking for updates finds nothing.

 

Sorry my bad. Ignore my last post, I've just noticed I still have them <- stupid. A couple of hours ago I monitored my latencies and I didn't notice any for 2-3 minutes and I thought they were gone.

No, they are still here, at least that's what the latency meter is telling me, but for some reason, they are very rare now.

 

Again, just my thoughts:

While a bunch of people may have started having the issue with Windows 7, I am pretty sure realtek stuttering issues have been going on since Vista and maybe XP. I definitely put my money on some sort of incompatibility between nvidia and realtek. Is everyone sure going back to sager/clevo's original released drivers for sound/video/wireless etc isn't stopping their problem? Also, for those of you who say the problem has 'gone away', I would love to know if you are constantly putting your laptop to sleep or not. Try sleeping it once or twice and then checking if the latency returns. I would bet nvidia's drivers aren't compatible with clevo's sleep settings (which certainly would not be the first time that's occurred).


P.S. That update for "Realtek - Network - Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller " was for the ethernet card and I'm *pretty* sure it didn't mess with the sound drivers.

 

Jkiller2 , that does not explain why some of us (including me) have the crackling problem while using Creative X-FI card.

 

Fair enough. Though if Nvidia's drivers are causing a driver conflict, I would *assume* the same latency spikes would cause problems with any sound card. Clevo owners probably have only tested either the creative or realtek combinations, as those are the only things out there. I still really think its a nvidia issue on clevo's when the drivers haven't been optimized for clevo.

Also, as the net is full of complaints with realtek stuttering on non-clevo machines, I would bet it's because all those people also have a nvidia graphics card whose drivers are causing problems. Those same people if they got creative's x-fi card (which certainly not many people have), would probably still have the same problem.

Yes, that's a lot of hypotheses and not a lot of facts (except for a 'fact' that if I switch back to the original graphics drivers released from clevo a year ago I don't have any issues), so of course I'm open to being wrong

 

That is my guess as well. I've had this problem since XP SP3.

edit: Realtek driver updated today.

 

For those who can't see the values in the registry to disable PowerMizer, just create them, set them as they are in this thread and it should work! At least for me, the frequencies are now constant and I don't have anymore sound problem

 

I've been googling around again to find a fix for this problem... both my GPU and my CPU are +10C warmer with powermizer disabled... not a very practical long term solution.

I couldnt find anything... Realtek 2.41 drivers are out, tried them to no avail. I was thinking about a potential solution but I dont have the knowledge to implement it. Maybe someone could program a tool to "soften" GPU clock transitions (perhaps the latency spikes wouldnt be as bad), or at least make them happen less often??

I dont see the point of having my GPU go back and forth between levels 1-2-3-4 all the time, level 1 is fine for most applications and then it could jump to 4 whenever I'm running a game or a graphical application... Powermizer really sucks I cant believe it isnt in NVidia's priority list to fix it, I'm reading posts everywhere from frustrated users stuck with the audio crackling/popping issue. 60k us latency spikes are not acceptable, period.

 

wow guys check this out...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=434691&page=31

alienware M17x users have been experiencing bad latency problems and apparently Dell has recognized that it was an NVidia hardware problem. Some users have had their NVidia GPUs switched to ATI under warranty and it has solved their problem... should we start calling our Sager/Clevo dealers before our warranty runs out??

 

The issue has gotten recently in Nvidia's attention and is currently top priority. Future driver release should solve the problem.

 

nice!!! hopefully we wont have to go through the mess of begging for a recall like those AW M17x users. let's pray for a software fix