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Message: [QUOTE="Paul, post: 14031554"] This is my theory as to the audio options on MSI NF980-G65. RealTek ------ Analog_Audio_Plugs ------ SPDIF ("Digital") --- 3_pin_header,adapter plate optional Nvidia ------ Audio_Over_HDMI If all your drivers were installed, you'd see two HDaudio devices in "Sound, video, and game controllers" section of Device Manager. If you go to Control Panels in WinXP and look for the control panel that handles "Sound and Audio Devices", under the (middle) Audio tab you'll see "Sound playback" has more than one option. You'd select the Nvidia entry in there, to get audio working over HDMI. Nvidia was using SPDIF passthru on some of their video cards, but in this case, it looks like the onboard MCP82 Northbridge has an HDAudio codec already provided, and separate from the RealTek one. If you look on your motherboard CD, the chipset driver package is a couple hundred megabytes. The README file isn't that useful, because it doesn't seem to be listing all the things I can see in the folders in there. You don't have to work at the folder level - the Nvidia jumbo driver package usually has "tick boxes" so you can selectively apply just the driver components you want. I use the folders, to see what is available. I can see an "HDAudio" folder, and inside it is a NVHDA.inf file. That file mentions "NVIDIA HDMI Output" near the bottom of the file, and it's possible a similar name will appear in Device Manager, once you've run the overall "setup.exe" and ticked the option to install MCP82 HDMI audio. Note - based on what I can see, I'd install the RealTek HDAudio driver first, because the RealTek package usually has the installer logic necessary to get the Microsoft UAA driver installed. That adds hdaudbus.sys to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers and adds a UAA entry to the "System" section of Device Manager. UAA is needed to make the Nvidia HDAudio device work, but I don't see a sub-folder with hotfix support showing in it. And that means installing the RealTek driver first, such that you end up with a UAA entry in the "System" section of Device Manager. Once you've verified RealTek (analog) audio is working, then install the Nvidia HDAudio portion of the jumbo Nvidia installer, and Nvidia's installation will be able to share the hdaudbus.sys file the RealTek installer put in the system. (If you're using WinXP SP3, then it has a copy of UAA built in, and there would be a little less to worry about. Sometimes the RealTek installer screws up though, but time will tell whether the installer logic in the RealTek installer is OK or not.) After the drivers are all installed, and there are no "yellow marks" or error codes in Device Manager, you should have the options shown in the diagram up above. If you select RealTek, you would then use the RealTek custom panel, to select analog or SPDIF. (SPDIF is useless without the optional adapter plate, and I don't see a TOSLINK or an RCA connector in the I/O area of the motherboard.) If you use the Sound control panel to select Nvidia, then your audio should start traveling over HDMI. Just a guess, Paul [/QUOTE]

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