Troubles with P4 1.6A - Sound stutters

[Olestros]

Hey guys,

Recently I bought a P4 1.6A. My friend who was running the 1.6A at 2.4 Ghz, convinced me that this was a better and cheaper solution then buying a regular 2.4. He's been running the system for months with no problems at all.

Some quick stats, mobo = P4B533, Samsung 333 Mhz ram, Radeon 8500, SB Live value.

So once I got the system home, I stated to play with it. I bumped the voltage up to 1.6v and FSB to 150Mhz.

System booted up fine and running benchmarks gave me good results (SiSoft Sandra). When leaving some graphic and cpu intensive games on to test out the system, the games would eventually crash.

So after some more testing I bumped the voltage up to 1.7v. After that I had absoloutely no problems running everything and it was pretty stable... except for one thing. Sound. If I play an MP3. After a while the sound starts to stutter. Even with some movies on the net the audio stutters every once and a while.

I thought it was the FSB so I put it back to 100Mhz @ 1600 Mhz. Was still having the same problems. Went back to bios and looked at the settings again and noticed that the voltage was still at 1.7v. So I decreased it to 1.6v to see if I still had any probs.

Rebooted and when playing music or movies, once and a while I'd still get the stuttering for a second or two.

Decreased the voltage back to the normal 1.5v and every worked perfectly. Music, video, no stuttering at all.

I'm not exactly sure what it is... my sound is on a PCI slot so I was thinking maybe the PCI bus speeds wasn't compatible with my FSB speeds.

When running @ 2.4, I can play the game with sound stable as a rock. No problems and it runs well. It's just when I play flash games and or playing music on Winamp, or Media Player I get that stuttering.

I've got my voltage at 1.675 atm and though I do get some stuttering of the sound it's berable, only stutters very infrequently however I'm curious as to what the problem could be.

BTW my temps are pretty good, around 40-45 C.

Any help or insight is much appreciated.

[Ragnor]

Sounds more likely a sound problem then an overclocking problem..

1) What soundcard?

2) How many PCI devices are you using and what are they?

[Olestros]

It's an Sound Blaster Live! Value.

I'm only using 2 PCI slots atm, my 3com nic and the sound card.

Thing is.... when I'm at 100Mhz FSB @ 1.6Ghz it all runs smoothly... no stuttering at all.

It's all under windows XP, CE with SP 1.

[mird-OC]

i've heard similar problems with P4/DDR owners, but have not seen a solution yet. there have been numerous attempts to try to explain it but AFAIK no one has figured out exactly why yet.

but consider this: with your CPU running at 2.4GHz @ 1.7 volts, it's generating twice as much heat compared to stock. even at stock speed @ 1.7 volts it's generating out 25% more heat. although your temps seem pretty good, they can jump around like crazy without you realising, and P4s will throttle themselves to reduce their temps when needed (which could be happening). although it doesn't explain why it's not a problem in games (maybe it has to do with the relatively short sample used by games *shrug*).

[Zilla]

Ive got a near identical system. p4 1.6 @ 2.4, SB live, except my board is an Abit BD7-Raid, which supports 66/33mhz AGP/PCI lock. Im not sure if the P4B533 has a agp lock like this BD7, which would mean upping the FSB would increase the PCI bus too. And if u up it to much, devices tend not to get detected, or lock-ups and stuff occure...

I know in my case, when i dont select the AGP/PCI lock and try overclocking, the Onboard Disk controller packs a wobbly and dont pick up the HDD's. This happens at like 35mhz PCI...

[Olestros]

Yes Zilla, it has an AGP / PCI lock. I can set it manual or auto it if I like.

I was thinking it was a problem with this as well, I'll try to set it on manual later AGP / PCI - > 66 / 33. Is that what you did?

Well I took out my SB live and used the intergerated sound device and it works fine. It's actually not a bad sound card but still it's sucking up cpu cycles and I'd rather have the SB live up and running.

I know what you guys are probably thinking, did I disable the intergrated sound when I had my sb live in? Heh, yes I did. First thing I did actually. My jumpers are set so I can use the BIOS to control everything so I didn't manually jumper of sound off... however the mobo manual said if I switch to jumper mode, I have to jumper everything instead of passing control to my bios. I'd rather not I think. Too much work.

Has anyone else had this type of problem?

[Zilla]

Ya i always have it fixed 66/33.

Onboard sound bites ass, its good for a backup though, especially with the amount of soldering i do on my SB Live, its amazing it still goes... :)

Sounds like youve got a really rare prob there dude. Have you got the latest SB Live Driver package?

Only other things i can suggest is trying someone elses SB Live or PCI sound card.

Or perhaps the CPU causes sound to stutter because when its got higher voltage going through it, it cant address the soundcards IRQ properly?? but thats a pretty extream theory... :)

[Olestros]

I'll try to plug in the live and set it at 66 / 33. I had just set it on auto earlier. At this point though, I just use a 2 speaker system without an amp anyways so I can't really tell the diff.

[Ragnor]

Make sure you have the latest intel chipset drivers and specifically the latest IDE drivers..

Also which PCI slots are your PCI cards in..?

[Olestros]

I already have my latest chipset drivers.

This is my system config atm

AGP - Radeon 8500
PCI 1 - Empty
PCI 2 - 3com Nic
PCI 3 - SB Live
PCI 4 - Empty
PCI 5 - Empty
PCI 6 - Empty

Even at a manual setting of 66 / 33 for agp / pci it still stutters. When I use the onboard it's fine. *sigh*.

[mird-OC]

it could possibly be a PCI latency issue, which may be addressable in the BIOS or which a wpcrset hack would fix. i know this has been an issue for a number of chipsets when running live cards.