ECS K7S5A and XP1700 issues

[LAJay]

Happy Holidays everyone~

I have a new ECS K7S5a with SIS735 chipset and AMD Athlon XP 1700. RAM is 256m Kingston PC133. My video is older ATI All-In-Wonder PRO (8meg). (I'm not a gamer yet! I just upgraded from PII233, so this is where I start - but I want the tv more than the games right now until I can afford to upgrade!)

I've loaded both Win2K server and WinXP Pro on different partitions. I've also got the XP and W2K drivers for the ATI from their web site - and that seems to be working ok.

Problems seem to be only in WinXP:
1) Sound is very distorted. at SIS's web site, there are audio drivers for this, as well as at ECS's web site. Which one do I rely on? I seem to remember reading here that the audio on this board is marginal - but if you update the sis audio drivers that it's ok - some users even said good. Win2k seems to be ok without updating anything.

2) Besides the distorted sound, when the TV tuner is on, any windows sounds (or music) will pause the TV for the time it takes to play the windows sound. In Win2K and Win98 the sounds just play over the TV - and doesn't interrupt it. How can I get them to behave correctly. TV Tuner is pushing the sound through the line-in on the mobo.

3) If I scrap using the onboard sound in favor of an add on, which of the many items in device manager under 'sound' do I disable and remove? Do I touch any of the "legacy" items listed?

4) How do I identify whether or not I have ver1x or ver 3x of the ECS mobo?

5) In the AMI bios (Aug02 dated) I can set the board speed to 100mhz and 133 mhz only, and it defaults to 100 mhz. I set to 133, and it seems ok - but why can't I set to 266? Memory related?

6) - this one is for the cpu forum, but maybe you can answer - how can I tell whether or not I have the A core, B core, and what do I have - thunderbred or palimino (i'm a little confused by what is what here)...

Thanks!
Jason

[$1500-P4 gamer]

On a brand new install of windows run the included driver disk for mobo only. DO NOT UPDATE DRIVERS MANUALY. Do not install drivers seperatly through the control panel either. The driver disk will do all the work and sound will be ok. I have the same mobo, followed that advice and have not one of the issues you have in any version of windows form 9x to XP.;)

[Peter M]

That all-in-wonder card is PCI, I assume? If so, then what you're experiencing simply is PCI bus congestion, blocking even those things that are chipset integrated, like the board's sound. This is not going to get better if you add more stuff on PCI, like a sound card. The one way to get rid of that problem is to move to an AGP graphics card.

[LAJay]

Thanks -

The disc that came with the mobo has one setup.exe for the LAN/Sound/ etc - for one, I would think that getting the latest drivers for each component separately (and installing) would be best.

And how do I know if I have the newer version of the mobo or the older one?

When I bought it (at Fry's) the first one had blue and red (DDR / SDRAM) memory slots, and a greenish style mainboard, but when I replaced it (first was dead - big surprise), the 2nd one is a brown style mainboard, with different color memory slots...
any insight into whether I had an old one or a new one before / now?

And Yes Peter - it's PCI ATI. However, I don't have this problem in Win2K Server or Win98. Shouldn't I be able to run that basic setup (Video and Sound) together without too much difficulty? It's not very demanding! I mean if Win98 had no problems with it, and Win2k - which is a closer cousin to WinXP - had no problems, then I'm assuming its a driver problem in the WinXP machine - even though yes, I'm using video and sound on the same bus...

[AllGamer]

The On Board AC 97 sound is from RealTek

so is best to look for RealTek sound drivers

the LAN is and Onboard SIS 10/100, so look for SIS drivers

:t

as for the ATI, it should have no trouble if you get the latest drivers for it

http://www.ati.com/support/products/pc/ragepro/winxp/rageprowinxpdrivers.html?cboOS=Windows+XP&cboProducts=ALL+IN+WONDER+PRO&eula=&choice=agree&cmdNext=Next

USE THE ALTERNATE DRIVERS !!! ;)

[LAJay]

Thanks All Gamer... Like I said - I was able to use the ATI alt drivers no problem... but I'm noticing weird problems now with the TV tuner (in XP only) - like the mute button is gone, and it takes 2-3 seconds to change channels now.... I've reloaded the driver and tv tuner, but no luck fixing this.

As for the sound - my sound is listed as "sis codec 1200" or something like that (my xp isn't up at the moment)...

On my Win2K (on right now) it is listed as AC-97, but the manufacturer is C-MEDIA, Inc... I'll check it out though.

[$1500-P4 gamer]

"The disc that came with the mobo has one setup.exe for the LAN/Sound/ etc - for one, I would think that getting the latest drivers for each component separately (and installing) would be best."

Typically yes. But with this mobo no. Lots of people have complained about sound issues and etc. doing it the way you did. With this mobo the drivers on the cd are perfect. Why fix what aint broke is what I say! The original sound and lan drivers STILL work fine for me in XP and ME.
:)

[LAJay]

thanks All-Gamer - so much for using our skills at upgrading!

Also - I think the PCI problems mentioned above might be a problem as well -
in researching this problem, I have read a little about this SIS735 chipset being bad at bus mastering, causing problems with anything on the southbridge....

Any thoughts and / or things you did to smooth out issues on this??

[BipolarBill]

My 2 cents:

Install all drivers from the CD with the setup utility and leave it. Do not download any updates. If you choose the wrong one, it will be hell trying to get it working right again. Trust me on this.

The MB version is lightly silkscreened on the board down behind the last PCI slot.

DDR RAM "double-pumps" the FSB for 266MHz effective bandwidth.

Get an AGP card.

[Peter M]

Originally posted by LAJay
thanks All-Gamer - so much for using our skills at upgrading!

Also - I think the PCI problems mentioned above might be a problem as well -
in researching this problem, I have read a little about this SIS735 chipset being bad at bus mastering, causing problems with anything on the southbridge....

Any thoughts and / or things you did to smooth out issues on this??

"The onboard sound is from Realtek" ... no it's not. The onboard sound is a chipset embedded SiS 7012 engine, merely accompanied by either a Realtek or a C-Media codec. You want to use SiS 7012 sound drivers as presented on your CD.

SiS 735 PCI performance is fine, cut the rumours. It's the PCI VGA that is blocking things too long. DVD viewing amounts to a lot of data being pushed into the graphics card. When the graphics card can't keep up, the entire system bus is stalled, sound data can't travel then. And since the old all-in-wonders didn't isolate TV viewing traffic from the PCI bus as the newer ones do, it happens then too. (The one thing to check here is whether you're running Overlay mode correctly.)

You ain't the first. Get over it, like all the others did.

[Logan[TeamX]]

If I recall correctly, the SiS 735 has a combined Northbridge / Southbridge, which allows for much higher bandwidth capabilities. Yet, as Peter states, the PCI video card is your downfall. I know, because I have the same motherboard and used to have a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI card. I had the same symptoms. I switched to a GeForce 2 Ti 64MB card, and presto! No more problems!

You really need to check with the person you ordered from to see which drivers you'll need, as I believe the manual covers both C-Media and Realtek. The Realtek-codec driven sound that I have on my board is absolutely fine, nice and clear, excellent for stereo gaming!

The SiS 900-based 100TX Ethernet adapter is fine, I've used it since day one without a glitch. The only pain was finding DOS drivers for it so I could run Norton Ghost. Other than that, it's sweet, and has really good performance.

I had a lot of problems with my system in the past that turned out to be a bad BIOS, bad PS, and questionable HSF combo. Check it all out, change what needs to be changed, and you're off to the races.

Logan

[LAJay]

BiPolar Bill - you were right.
Like any good upgrader - instead of using the mobo drivers that came with it, I went directly to the web site for the latest drivers. HOWEVER, there were two sound drivers listed for that mobo - C-Media 9738, and SIS 7012.... because it has a SIS735 chipset - I thought the SIS was the right one, but that is the one that garbled the sound. It's really the C-Media drivers that work! I don't know why they have both listed for that -- must have been some boards use the SIS drivers and others use the c-media drivers.

But I went back and I reloaded the mobo drivers CD, which replaced the vga, sound and lan drivers, and everything came back hunkey-dory.
The sound drivers it installed are also listed in device manager as the C-Media driver for the AC-97 sound.

Thanks everyone!!!!! :t

[$1500-P4 gamer]

"But I went back and I reloaded the mobo drivers CD, which replaced the vga, sound and lan drivers, and everything came back hunkey-dory.
The sound drivers it installed are also listed in device manager as the C-Media driver for the AC-97 sound."

Told ya so, nananana. Hehe. BP told me that when I asked about getting this mobo. Being the way I am, I believed him right away. And guess what, no probs. yet. Good luck with your now "working" sound. And by the way to clear some confusion on this. The sound "chip" is SiS 7012 or c-media. The codec isnt the same thing as sound chip. The sound chip is Digital. The codec changes it from digi to anaolg for your speakers. the codec is nothing more than a converter, like a modem is (but one way only) while the chip process the sound. Personally I think the sis735 chip is awsome so far.
:t