ATI, ASUS, Win 7, Audio Driver ALC1200 and crashes

After a fairly long and somewhat pain full process--
The Audio Driver for the Realtek ALC 1200 sound chip used on the ASUS
M4A79 Deluxe motherboard turns out to be the culprit for random video
corruption, crashing, and sound corruption. This has been a very pesky
problem, since it typically errored out with a message pointing to the
executable that indirectly called the sound driver.

To make matters more confusing, The driver is not available directly
from Realtek. The ASUS web site has the correct driver, but reused the
download entry for an earlier version, and shows an incorrect 2009 date.
The version actually downloaded has many files in the package dated 4/10

The most noticible and immediate result was to stop crashing in Call of
Duty 4 Modern Warfare, and also to allow crash free play at high
resolution and detail settings.

Win 7 32b, Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.8G, Dual HD 5770 video cards. Using
10.4 Video drivers.

ADDENDUM
The ALC1200 driver update also solved similar problems with Call of Duty
2. A quick check of Crysis showed that it is also likely much improved,
if not fixed entirely. It's interesting that some of the AMD/ATI driver
download sites have evidently pulled the 10.6 revision.
I believe a 10.7 version may be in the near future.



On 7/14/2010 4:42 PM, Chuck wrote:
After a fairly long and somewhat pain full process--
The Audio Driver for the Realtek ALC 1200 sound chip used on the ASUS
M4A79 Deluxe motherboard turns out to be the culprit for random video
corruption, crashing, and sound corruption. This has been a very pesky
problem, since it typically errored out with a message pointing to the
executable that indirectly called the sound driver.

To make matters more confusing, The driver is not available directly
from Realtek. The ASUS web site has the correct driver, but reused the
download entry for an earlier version, and shows an incorrect 2009 date.
The version actually downloaded has many files in the package dated 4/10

The most noticible and immediate result was to stop crashing in Call of
Duty 4 Modern Warfare, and also to allow crash free play at high
resolution and detail settings.

Win 7 32b, Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.8G, Dual HD 5770 video cards. Using 10.4
Video drivers.

Second Addendum Using 10.8 ATI drivers
out & out video related crashing returned. In the interim between 10.7,

I ended up reverting to 10.4. The Audio driver related problems seem
still to be gone. (No audio screeching, etc. during a crash), and
seemingly no compatibility problems with COD 2,4, etc.

The 10.8 version seems to be OK (so far) with Crysis. I do see
occasional problems with more conventional programs (Office 07), when
the demand for RAM is high, and more than one program is active.

An oddity is a momentary group of widely spaced pixelated squares that
can occur. Since I've also observed this on other systems with ATI HD
video cards, and this was not occurring with some earlier 10.x driver
versions, I'm assuming it is still a software issue.

Microsoft recently released a "hot fix" for win 7 to improve video
stability on some systems.

10.8 seems slower, and occasional short pauses in FurMark are lessened
greatly.




On 7/19/2010 12:46 PM, Chuck wrote:
ADDENDUM
The ALC1200 driver update also solved similar problems with Call of Duty
2. A quick check of Crysis showed that it is also likely much improved,
if not fixed entirely. It's interesting that some of the AMD/ATI driver
download sites have evidently pulled the 10.6 revision.
I believe a 10.7 version may be in the near future.



On 7/14/2010 4:42 PM, Chuck wrote:
After a fairly long and somewhat pain full process--
The Audio Driver for the Realtek ALC 1200 sound chip used on the ASUS
M4A79 Deluxe motherboard turns out to be the culprit for random video
corruption, crashing, and sound corruption. This has been a very pesky
problem, since it typically errored out with a message pointing to the
executable that indirectly called the sound driver.

To make matters more confusing, The driver is not available directly
from Realtek. The ASUS web site has the correct driver, but reused the
download entry for an earlier version, and shows an incorrect 2009 date.
The version actually downloaded has many files in the package dated 4/10

The most noticible and immediate result was to stop crashing in Call of
Duty 4 Modern Warfare, and also to allow crash free play at high
resolution and detail settings.

Win 7 32b, Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.8G, Dual HD 5770 video cards. Using 10.4
Video drivers.

On 9/7/2010 12:30 AM, Chuck wrote:
Second Addendum Using 10.8 ATI drivers
out & out video related crashing returned. In the interim between 10.7,

I ended up reverting to 10.4. The Audio driver related problems seem
still to be gone. (No audio screeching, etc. during a crash), and
seemingly no compatibility problems with COD 2,4, etc.

The 10.8 version seems to be OK (so far) with Crysis. I do see
occasional problems with more conventional programs (Office 07), when
the demand for RAM is high, and more than one program is active.

An oddity is a momentary group of widely spaced pixelated squares that
can occur. Since I've also observed this on other systems with ATI HD
video cards, and this was not occurring with some earlier 10.x driver
versions, I'm assuming it is still a software issue.

Microsoft recently released a "hot fix" for win 7 to improve video
stability on some systems.

10.8 seems slower, and occasional short pauses in FurMark are lessened
greatly.




On 7/19/2010 12:46 PM, Chuck wrote:
ADDENDUM
The ALC1200 driver update also solved similar problems with Call of Duty
2. A quick check of Crysis showed that it is also likely much improved,
if not fixed entirely. It's interesting that some of the AMD/ATI driver
download sites have evidently pulled the 10.6 revision.
I believe a 10.7 version may be in the near future.



On 7/14/2010 4:42 PM, Chuck wrote:
After a fairly long and somewhat pain full process--
The Audio Driver for the Realtek ALC 1200 sound chip used on the ASUS
M4A79 Deluxe motherboard turns out to be the culprit for random video
corruption, crashing, and sound corruption. This has been a very pesky
problem, since it typically errored out with a message pointing to the
executable that indirectly called the sound driver.

To make matters more confusing, The driver is not available directly
from Realtek. The ASUS web site has the correct driver, but reused the
download entry for an earlier version, and shows an incorrect 2009 date.
The version actually downloaded has many files in the package dated 4/10

The most noticible and immediate result was to stop crashing in Call of
Duty 4 Modern Warfare, and also to allow crash free play at high
resolution and detail settings.

Win 7 32b, Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.8G, Dual HD 5770 video cards. Using 10.4
Video drivers.


Looks like the long hassle is about over. The 11.6 drivers have fixed a
lot of the problems that I was having. (Just not quite all)