LaRue05

Anyone have any experience with this? It seems like it might be exactly what I'm looking for. http://www.diskinternals.com/raid-to-raid/

Haven't posted here in a long while, bare with me as I explain my issue. I have an Asus Striker II Formula MB, it was great for the past 7 years. It has officially decided to not post, I've run the whole system through all troubleshooting steps to get it to post and it simply won't. So it's time to buy a new MB, which I was excited about. Until I realized that the 5 hard drives I have connected in this system were all setup via the mother board RAID configuration. Shiiiizzznit. FML #firstworldproblems 2 OS/program drives in Raid 1. 3 files drives in Raid 5. Wipping the drives is 100% not an option, to much data that is vital to my family. Which means I have to find a motherboard that has the same RAID configuration profile as the 7 year old Striker II. Correct? Now some more info, in the MB user guide the RAID information is actually listed under Chapter 5 "Software Support" which made me second guess that it might actually be software RAID and not hardware. Turning to that chapter it talks about the NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI Southbridge RAID controller; but never says if is truly software or hardware RAID. So yeah, I need an expert here. I'm going to purchase the i7 5820k CPU for my next build. Now I need a motherboard that will have a compatible RAID setup for my current drives. HELP PLEASE!!!

Well folks, it's been about 3 weeks since I checked in on the forums... It turns out that indeed my ASUS Striker II Formula nVidia 780i Motherboard was bad. Just this past Monday the new replacement one for my RMA came in the mail. Doubtful that it was going to work properly, I took 2 nights(after work) to get it reassembled. I loaded up Vista Ultiamate x64, and immediately updated to SP1. (I had the .exe saved on a flash drive) Then I installed the current motherboard drivers, the ones from nVidia not ASUS, followed by the graphics card drivers and wireless network drivers. All of this was done without any type of sound card. If you remember the issue I was getting horrible screeching with all types of audio, including standard USB headsets. So finally I'm ready to test sound(again with USB audio)... I load up Crysis, TF2, WOW, and the Age of Conan beta. FINALLY REDEPTION!! All sound is in working order, not a single glitch in graphics or sounds. I'm so happy that this motherboard is working with just standard USB audio that I may not even put in one of the two high end sound cards that I have. Anyways, starting here in less than 2 hours I have a 4 day weekend. I plan on HAPPY frustration free gaming the whole weekend.... I've even told my wife. I'm also part of the Early Access group of Age of Conan so I'll be in game on the 17th. For those of you that are curious as to what the current build is here's all the specs again: Antec 900 Case 750W PC P&C Silencer Asus Striker II Formula nVidia 780i Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 @ 3.0Ghz, not overclocked yet. 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 PC8500, not overclocked yet. Dual XFX GeForce 8800GTX graphics cards Dual 150GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000rpm HDs running in Raid 0 for OS and Applications Triple 750GB Western Digital Caviar 7200rpm HDs running RAID 5 for storage. Dual DVD/CD Lightscribe Burners. Sitting in waiting, unsure if I'll use them: Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Platinum edition SoundMax HD FX mini PCI-E sound card

UPDATE I've caved... I'm RMAing the motherboard. I tried every last situation possible to get audio to work. Straight out of the box with just the SoundMax Drivers and chipset drivers I should be listening to music, without any lag spikes based on my setup. This according to Level 2 Tech Support with ASUS (which by the way have a very efficent phone support system, I was highly shocked by it). Looks like I'll be shutting Black_Beauty down tomorrow since I'm off work and disassembling her. They say I should have my new board in 10 days once they recieve mine. If anything this should at least give me 100% satisfaction that it isn't the motherboard; if the new one comes in and I have the same problems. Sigh... I'm highly upset at the moment.

UPDATE I have effectively rulled out that it is a memory issue, as I booted the machine on all four DIMMS seperately in slot 1 of the motherboard. I would try booting from a seperate slot, but you always have to have at least one DIMM in slot 1 to run the motherboard. So ruling out that it is a memory issue rasing the voltage of the DIMMs is now a moot point. I also ran DXDIAG as suggested above and recieved no errors on any tabs, which leads me to believe this is a software error of some sort? I'm so stumped. I don't want to RMA my motherboard!!! Grrrr....

Ok, so I got this as a response in one of the other forums that I'm a member of, but it's unclear to me what he is talking about. "Turn off all sound efects etc for the soundcard, Vista does not suport audio hardware, XtremeGamer should do perfectly fine with everything disabled. Creative Alchemy will let the card work normal again with a lot of game but Crysis uses DirectSound wich it cant do anything with at all in Vista. OpenAL games work fine on there own because Vista doesnt encodfe it, for DirectSound3D how ever you need Creative Alchemy, but as said before this doesnt work if the game uses a sound engine like Crysis wich is just DirectSound." Can anyone make some sense of this? Is he talking about re-installing the X-fi and then disabling all effects of the card itself through it's sound manager program; as well as turning off all Vista Services such as "windows audio" And where does DirectSound come into the picture?.... this part thoroughly confuses me.

Ah... good idea for sure, don't know why I hadn't thought of that one. I'm putting that on my list of things to do too when I get home. Point well taken, I just don't see how pushing the hardware even more is going to alleviate current issues. However, like I stated above I will go in and set the voltage of the DIMMS to 2.1v

I'll definately try it Hardnrg... but I'm confused how this would effect the sound issues. And would it be safe to exceed the 2.1v that Corsair says "It has been verified to operate at 1066MHz at latencies of 5-5-5-15-2T at 2.1VDIMM Everywhere I've read, even on this site it's almost a Biblical no-no to go over the voltage set by the manufacturer

Ccokeman, what exactly did you test the X-fi with, was it an nVidia chipset mobo? From all my readings that's the main issue with the card, in that it has severe PCI conflicts with all nVidia chipset boards. To my knowledge there is no option to turn off EAX in Crysis/Lost Planet. Wouldn't doing so put everything in stereo sound? Also, there is no hardware acceleration in Vista Ultimate x64. And yes, ocassionally when the sound makes these awful noises the graphics do stutter a bit. I haven't tried less RAM, I'll do that when I get home from work tonight. As far as raising the voltage, it's already running at 1.9v and Corsair says not to go beyond 2.1v I wonder if bringing the RAM up to 1066MHz from 800MHz will do anything?

Ok, So for those of you that have been keeping up with me and my build, lets just say things are going awfully in the audio department, and I can't figure out why. I finally shelled out the $37 for FRAPS just so I could get some decent videos of the ingame sound errors I've been having. Again: Here are my main system specs. ASUS Striker II Extreme Formula Edition NVIDIA 780i nForce *note* this mobo has NO onboard sound. Intel QX9650 Core 2 Extreme running 1333FSX x10.5 @ 3.5Ghz (overclocked from 3.0 due to the multiplier, *note* read on before you suggest what I know you're thinking) 2 nVidia XFX Geforce 8800GTX graphics cards (currently only one in the system) 8GB of Corsair Dominator DDR2 memory running at stock 800MHz speed. 270GB SATA Raid 0 OS 1.36TB SATA Raid 5 Storage 750Watt Silencer PSU from PC Power and Cooling. (More than enough to power everything in system) Vista Ultimate x64 Now then, here's the sound setups I've tried. I've tried 2 different sound cards now: X-Fi Xtreme Gamer (don't even get me started on this card) Supreme FX II Absolute HD sound card (this comes standard with the ASUS Striker II mobo) And finally, I've tried using my USB headset (which have a detachable connector so I can plug them directly into sound cards). **CURRENTLY THERE IS NO SOUND CARD INSTALLED** I have eliminated the fact that it is headphones/speakers, as I've tried 2 completely different sets of headphones... and one set of 5.1 speakers. All different makers. Next I thought (and it still could be) a graphics card problem. Currently I've only got one of the XFX 8800GTX cards in the system, and when I swap them out I get the same results. I also get the same results when both cards are in the system, and it doesn't matter if they're running SLI or not. Which brings me to my mobo... I have no way of going about testing this, and I really don't want to have to deal with ASUS in doing an RMA request. So without further ado... I bring you the ear splitting sounds of ingame action. ***WARNING*** TURN DOWN YOUR SPEAKERS... THIS IS PAINFULL. This one is Crysis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2X_Cyte2FQ This one is Lost Planet http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8L4SD-nA7Y Ok, now that you've heard the crazyness let me throw a couple of wrenches into the mix. 1) I get all these errors no matter if I run Direct x9 or x10 2) Sound in Half-Life/Portal/Team Fortress 2 runs pretty smoothly... although occasional light popping (which is bearable) these games are still playable. 3) These symptoms present themselves even running everything at stock speeds in the BIOS. 4) Finally sound runs smoothly in OS sounds and online, youtube runs great online browsing sounds run fine. Which is why I'm lead to believe it's a graphics problem. I need some super help in figuring out if I need to be calling nVidia directly, ASUS directly, or both. Before anyone suggests it, I have all the latest drivers of all hardware installed. Anyone want to take a shot at this? Please anyone, I'm desperate at this point.

Uh.. yeah, so I have no clue what the actual fix was, but it wasn't the Daniel_K drivers. That set he created apparently doesn't recognize the x-fi XtremeGamer Series. But for some wired reason it's working... almost flawlessly, about 90% of the time, much better than the 2% from yesterday. There are some main differences, and I don't know what caused the fix. 1) I uninstalled all sound hardware, both the card and the front case face plate. 2) I uninstalled all software 3) I deleted all files from the PC 3) I installed just the card... the face plate is out of the picture at this point. 4) I installed just the drivers for the card. At this point there was no popping/cracking, but I wanted the programs and 3D sound, so I pressed forward. 5) I installed the programs.... things broke badly. 6) I uninstalled everything again. 7) I loaded the driver from the CD from Computer Management... vs through the SB autostart CD. 8) I loaded half of the programs, and reboot. 9) I loaded second half... everything broke again. 10) I uninstalled everything manually, and deleted all files and SB programs and rebooted. 11) I disabled auto detect hardware upon restart. 12) I then loaded all the programs that the card was capable of before the drivers... reboot. 13) I loaded the drivers of the X-fi card from the Computer Management of Vista.... at this point there was sound, but none of the extra programs worked. They just said something along the lines of "No Hardware detected, please close program and try again" 14) I ran SB Update and downloaded the 2.15 Vista drivers and installed them... reboot. 15) This finally gave me sound, and all the extra programs now work. I've tested the sound on youtube, mp3s, windows sounds, internet sounds, and web radio. I'm sort of scared to test it on DVDs or games as I feel it's going to break everything again. Like I said it works without any pops/crackles about 90% of the time. Now this could be due to the really crappy headphones I have(picked them up at BB for $15 a year ago), or it could be the card. I'm undecided if I'm going to go out and buy a more recommend set of headphones only to find out they won't work either. If things continue to work though I may try to install the face plate again and see what happens. If it completely makes things go hay wire I'll rip it out and sell it on eBay. But I'm not doing that tonight. I think I'm gathering the balls to test a game sound on this rig.... Wish me luck.

Well this is the definition of one of them. I guess the best I can do is try it when I get home from work. SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio Windows Vista Pack 1.04.0078A Thanks for the link kingdingeling, I'll let the group know if it works with my setup.

Ok, so after several days of troubleshooting all this X-fi Xtreme card does is pop, crackle, and lag beyond belief. Blows my mind how many "fixes" I've tried from oh so many sites (including ours) and it still doesn't work. I'm almost positive I found out why it doesn't work. Simply for the fact that everytime I install it Vista sets it to the same IRQ as both of my graphics cards(IRQ16). This poses several problems. However in Vista it's pretty much impossible to rearange IRQ assignments, and in my mobo BIOS there is no listing for adjusting PCI slots. I've looked everywhere. So anyone have some solutions? Oh and get this. Creative banded me after 1 post from their forums, as a new customer that thourghly pissess me off. I literally posted an inquiry about why their stuff doesn't work, with no vulgarity. I hate them, I can't even read other posts now on their site. I pretty much hate this product.

And that's why we are all here is it not. To Overclock, I just wasn't sure if this system is ready. But it looks like it is. Been running stable for about a week now. I'll start messing with the proc settings tonight then.

Hmm.. I guess maybe it is running correctly, but it's just having a reporting problem with the settings. SLI with Nvidia Performance and AF2 running: 15897 SLI with Nvidia Quality and AF2 running: 15379 No SLI with Nvidia Performance and no AF2 running: 12406 No SLI with Nvidia Quality and no AF2 running: 11830 So that's only about a 22-23% increase from one card vs. two cards. Seems kinda low. Any thoughts?