MB and Audio advice, please - integration of APU and codec

[Jay Williams]

I've recently put my stepson's old ASUS NForce-based (A7N266-VM) motherboard
in my computer (having heat problems with my previous MSI board.

I was getting a lot of sound stuttering withe the onboard audio (MCP-D
southbridge and Realtek ALC 650 audio module) so I installed an old Phillips
Seismic Edge soundcard I had laying around.

It's better, but still choppy. Now, here's where I *think* the problem is
coming from. When I disabled the onboard sound, I also removed the
soundstorm drivers, thinking that they were now superfluous, since I had the
sound card. In research the possiblity of buying an Audigy 2 (b/c Toms
Hardware says it has the second least CPU load - Least being (you guessed
it) the NForce2 APU) vs. buying an NForce2 based board, I noticed that the
NForce2 boards would reference AC'97 sound, Realtek ALC650 (which my current
board has) in the same paragraph as referencing the NForce2 APU. Further
reading suggested that the APU would work in conjunction with the AC'97 or
whatever sound - idea being that the APU does the work in hardware, and then
the AC'97 or Realtek ALC650 converts the digital into analogue and sends it
to the speakers....

First question - Have I got the above correct? Is that how it works?

Second question - Do I then need to re-install the APU and soundstorm
drivers so that they will handle some of the work of the Phillips card? (or
does the built in APU only work with the built in sound?)

Thanks,
confused and longing for simpler days

 

[Jay Williams]

Excuse me, I didn't disable soundstorm or the control applet, I disabled the
audio MPU thing and the dolby digital thing in the control panel. I just
re-enabled them and rebooted. The computer re-installed the
"Nvidia(r)nforce(TM) MCP Audio Processing Unit (Doby" and the
"Nvidia(r)nforce(TM) Audio Codec Interface" I discovered I had to go to
properties and disable the Nvidia audio codec interface to get sound. I
haven't tried the stuttering games to see if that helped yet, so any of you
more experienced folks, I'd appreciate your input.

 

[Ed_]

Excuse me, I didn't disable soundstorm or the control applet, I disabled the
audio MPU thing and the dolby digital thing in the control panel. I just
re-enabled them and rebooted. The computer re-installed the
"Nvidia(r)nforce(TM) MCP Audio Processing Unit (Doby" and the
"Nvidia(r)nforce(TM) Audio Codec Interface" I discovered I had to go to
properties and disable the Nvidia audio codec interface to get sound. I
haven't tried the stuttering games to see if that helped yet, so any of you
more experienced folks, I'd appreciate your input.

When I installed my M-Audio 7.1 Revolution in my A7N8X-Dx here are the steps
that I took.

1. Boot into the bios and disable the onboard sound.

2. Boot into safe mode and uninstall the Nvidia drivers in the sound device.

3. Before rebooting, go to control panel and add/remove and uninstall the
Nvidia Soundstorm software and drivers.

4. Shut down and physically install the sound card, then boot up and install
the software for the soundcard.

Worked on the A7N8X so I think it would work on the A7n266.

BTW....Revolution rocks!!

Ed