Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7 Excessive DPC Latency

[plop28]

Yes, its not really a issue. But this fan stay at 800 RPM instead of 1350 RPM. The Processor is overcloked so when i lunch a game, i run speedfan before.

One of these fan is plug on the first 4 Pin connector : CPU_FAN, the other on the second 4 Pin connector he's called SYS_FAN2.

[Dark Mantis]

Both the CPU fan and SYS Fan2 can be controlled by the BIOS because they are both 4 pin PWM fan outlets.

[plop28]

Yes. But in the BIOS i have a setting for CPU_FAN control. I have disabled this for manual control. There is no setting for the manual control of SYS_FAN2

[Dark Mantis]

CPU Smart FAN Control
Enables or disables the CPU fan speed control function. Enabled allows the CPU fan to run at different speed according to the CPU temperature. You can adjust the fan speed with EasyTune based on system requirements. If disabled, the CPU fan runs at full speed. (Default: Enabled)

You are quite correct that there is no way to control the SYSFAN2 from the BIOS. Stupid really.

[plop28]

yep

And in speedfan there is no fan that it can control. Other Fan are not listed.

Same with FB BIOS..

[Tyranties]

Hi, I found this article while googling.  I believe I have the same, if not a similar issue.  Here is a synopsis.

So I have a really, really annoying problem with my rig in regards to sound.

X58-UD3R
i920 @ 2.8ghz
6gb Corsair Dominator RAM (1336 I believe or around about)
GTX480
X-Fi Titanium Fatality
Win7 64bit

The breakdown.
In the following games the problem occurs after 6-10 minutes of playtime.
-Civ V
-Napoleon TW
-BFBC2
-Sims 3
-Dirt 2
-Mafia II
-Medal of Honor (2010)
-Just Cause 2


Unaffected Games
-Guild Wars
-Dead Rising 2

Minimally Affected Games
-CoD Black Ops MP (nuketown with 32 people spamming nades)
-Team Fortress 2 (DPC shows a spike but I dont hear any change to audio quality)
-Far Cry 2 (Comes and goes during heavy explosions)
-Lost Planet 2 (some snap crackle and pop during brief moments but doesn't last)

The problem?
After 6-10 mins of playing most games my crystal clear audio begins to pop and crackle.  If I was sitting in the jungle all by myself and this occurs I can hear soft pops.  The second a boom or explosion occurs you can really hear the pop and crackles much louder. 
So in a game like BC2's nade spam fest I hear a tonne of loud popping and crackling after 6 mins of crystal clear gameplay.  Civ V also pops and crackles, the louder the sound the greater the audio distortion.
Games like Guild Wars however remain 100% unaffected, after hours of straight play there is no popping or crackling, even running Guild Wars and WMP playing heavy metal thrash.
I don't notice any cracking or popping in Black Ops SP, in MP I can only notice a little when 32 players are only spamming grenades and there's explosions everywhere.
The audio pop and crackle problem once it begins stays until I exit the application, click  refresh on my desktop and give it around 20 seconds.  If I exit the application and immediately play music, that music also pops and crackles with distortion.  If I exit the app, wait 20 secs and then play music, the music is fine.

When did this begin? 
Truthfully I am not sure, I noticed it with the release of Civ 5, and then weeks later when I played BFBC2 and my PC was a fresh install and clean build done in late sep.

It's your soundcard?
Is it?  I am aware my card has reported issues with popping and cracking, I have researched this and I am not suffering the same issue.  The X-Fi pop and crackle problem is that the audio is crap 24/7, moving the mouse makes horrible noise, etc.  Mine is only for applications which actually make my PC work hard.
So then your soundcard is broken?
No it is not.  I have disabled my X-Fi and used onboard sound.  The problem persists but is less obvious and less annoying, only due to the fact the onboard soundcard isn't as powerful as the X-Fi.  I have also physically removed my X-Fi and used only my onboard sound and the problem remains.
Drivers dude?
Updated them already, and them scrubbed them with driver sweeper and tried all sorts of variants, the problem remains.  Perhaps a format and a clean install might work?
Fiddle with your settings.
Done that, I have tried every fix that the X-Fi problem FAQ recommends, Audio creation mode, 24bit matched playback, disable crystalizer etc.  They all do nothing, also those are fixes for the X-Fi.  Uninstalling and scrubbing all the X-Fi drivers and physically removing the card and using purely the onboard audio still gives me the same problem.  Disabling onboard sound and using my X-Fi also gives this audio problem.
Well what the hell?
I downloaded a DPC latency checker and when my audio pops and crackles in games after 6-10 mins you can see the bars jump up to 2800us+.  Something IS messing with my rig.  During the heavy pops and crackles with BFBC2 I ctrl alt del and check on my memory useage and CPU, they are both pretty good with plenty of leg room.  I would assume then this is related to my GPU?

Possibly related?  My computer has blue screened around 4-5 times suddenly since it was built and clean installed in september.  Error message was a physical memory dump.

Do any of you have any other ideas of how I can troubleshoot or fix this audio problem?

When I got my PC games like Mafia 2, Dirt 2, Lost Planet 2 and Medal of Honor worked fine with crystal clear audio.  But now these games suffer from the audio pop and crackle problem, some more than others.  Perhaps the latest nvidia drivers did this?  the 260.99 version?

I scrubbed them off with drive sweeper and installed my default nvidia drivers off the disc, they are 197.41 but the problem remains.  Although as mentioned when I first got my PC Mafia 2, Dirt 2 etc all ran brilliantly with good audio, now, no matter what drivers I put on, it's a snap crackle and pop fest in a few mins of gameplay.

Ideas?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum and Happy Christmas.

Have you disabled the onboard sound option in the BIOS?

Try moving the sound card to a different slot.

Have you been though the recommended faultfinding technique for pinning down the culprit of the latency?

[Tyranties]

I can't move the soundcard to a different slot as the GFX card takes up too many.  Removing the card entirely and using only onboard sound still gives me high DPC latency.

I couldn't find any option to disable the onboard soundcard in the bios, in fact under the bios I noticed there was actually very few options in comparison to older mobos  0.o

I am also unaware of how I track down the exact culprit of the DPC latency loss.  I tried disabling devices one by one, or shutting down services but I have had 0 success after a non stop week of troubleshooting

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

To disable the onmboard sound option just go to the Integrated Peripherals section in the BIOS and disable the Azalia Codec. So try that first.

With the latency issue the problem is easilly fixed but finding the culprit can be more troublesome. Latency is caused by bad programming generally. There are various

rules for how a program should access the core and if it doesn't follow these rules it can result in the core not being released for the next

operation and this causes a bottleneck that backs up. The biggest headache from our perspective is that we have to find the rogue

program/driver.

The best way to tackle this is to go to Task Manager and then in the Processes section stop all the processes that are not required

for Windows to run. If you do this one at a time until you find the one that is causing the trouble. Then depending on what it is as to how you

tackle the repair.

If none of that works you would need to go to Device Manager and disable all the devices not needed to run the system. Then you can

enable them one at a time and again see which one causes the problem.

Have fun!

[Tyranties]

I have been tinkering and here are some updates.

I disabled the onboard sound (it being called Azalia Codec instead of Realtek Audio etc threw me off a little)
And disabling the onboard audio does not fix the problem sadly.

But perhaps I am getting closer.

I noticed with the DPC checker on when I plugged in my LAN couple there was quite a spike, within the yellow zone, but tolerable.
So I fired up Civ V which is a game where I can reaaally noticed this issue.  And after a few mins the audio popped and crackled.  I went to device manager and began disabling devices, and waiting around 20 seconds before re-enabling them.
When I disabled the onboard LAN connection, 7 seconds later my DPC dropped from 30,000+ to around 150.  I returned to my game and played for a further 7 mins until the pops and crackles returned.
I then enabled the LAN connection again.  No change.  So I disabled it again.  No change. 
So I continued unabling other devices and when I disabled a seagate external HDD the DPC dropped from 29, 000+ down to around 120.
So I turned off my PC and removed the external HDD completely. 
I then tried Civ V again, and sadly, the popping and crackling returned within 2 mins of gameplay. 
I am however notcing that the more and more devices I disable in the system manager, that when the DPC loss occurs, it doesn't "seem" to last as long, but it's still there and it's still verrry annoying.

I'm going to back up my data tonight and then try updating the onboard LAN drivers, see how that goes.  After that I will update the bios.

I have been using the task manager to look at processes when the DPC loss occurs and none are using more resources than they should.  I also can't noticed anything else running that shouldn't be.  I have turned off a tonne of processes, but the DPC loss still occurs.

The search continues

[Dark Mantis]

It casn take a while to hunt it down to be fair, but I think you are attacking it from the wrong direction. I would suggest turning off/disabling everything that isn't need to run Windows and the try playing your game and see if you still have a problem. If you do then it is more likely hardware based, although this is more unusual.
If it runs fine then, you can start enabling devices one at a time until it returns.

[Tyranties]

News from the frontlines...

I backed up all my data to my ext HDD in case what I did next went wrong or my only solution was a format.

What I did.
Disabled pretty much eveerrrything in device manager and restarted my PC.  The issue still occurred, just it took longer to occur.

Sad face

So then I downloaded a bios update for my X-58A-UD3R  rev 2.0 mobo.  I was using the FA rev 2.0  now I am using the FC rev 2.0

It's still early days, but so far I have not heard any audio pops or crackles from microstutter.  I played Civ V for a little over an hour with no pops or crackles and 0 microstutter.  And when I quit I noticed I had reached 29k+ in DPC latency but I never noticed or heard it.

I then played BFBC2 and played around 3-4 full rounds.  Again I didn't notice any microstutter or hear any pops or crackles.  But when I quit the game I did see one red spike and DPC checker said I did have a max of 29k.

So the problem it seems is still potentially there, with me having insanely high DPC loss.  But I cannot notice it yet in games.  And if this continues I could live with it.  I didn't notice stutter or hear the annoying pops and crackles, but the DPC checker says there is still some DPC loss.

If I had to guess what was the cause of all this, I would point to either SATA 3 or perhaps USB 3.0

I will keep you updated if this problem returns or I notice it.  As I said it is early days.  I will also return in a few days or a week and tell you if the problem has gone away or is so minute I can't notice it any more.

[Dark Mantis]

Well at least you seem to be making some headway now and I am sure that you will get there in time

[Tyranties]

Okay, so the mobo bios update has reduced the DPC latency loss considerably.  It still spikes from time to time, but it doesn't give me that audio popping/crackling problem any more.

Maybe the occasional one or two pops now and then, but nothing like what it was doing.  So to users experiencing similar problems, I recommend updating your motherboard bios.

[Dark Mantis]

Yes I would agree especially if the BIOS version you have presently is an older one. Often little things like this are fixed in the updates but don't make it onto the description list of fixes.