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I have this motherboard for about year and Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer PCI from previous PC (it's OEM version named SB0770, which contains UAA bridge chip, allowing to run sound card without drivers just like onboard audio solution). I installed it into my new build because my ears aren't satisfied with onboard ALC887. After driver installation I can listen music and play games without any hitch. But that's last moment when things look normal - when I change default Microsoft SATA driver to Intel (or preinstall it at point, where disk partitioning happens at Windows Setup).
When sound card's driver isn't installed, card operates in UAA mode - no problem with sound, but it's not possible to use capabilities of main sound chip at all.
When sound card's driver is installed, card operates in 20K1 mode (20K1 means main sound chip, CA20K1) - clicks and pops but only when audio is played and no disk access happens. Happens only when Intel SATA driver is installed. OS-independent, checked also on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
So playback works fine, but recording... sometimes it records, sometimes not and when wave finally appears in Audacity - it's broken. http://i64.tinypic.com/bfpes9.png
Already excluded card damage, because on two differents systems recording is good. The #1 was my previous Core 2 Quad on Gigabyte 965P-S3, the #2 - ancient Pentium III on Abit BX133-RAID (with 440BX chipset). These two were running Windows 7 (32-bit), and #1 was also running Windows 10 x64.
Nothing comes to my mind besides PCI bus being native on these two computers (on Z170-HD3P PCI bus is provided by ASM1083 bridge chip and maybe that's culprit?) and *PCI Latency Timer option, which happens to exist in BIOS/UEFI (look for PCI Subsystem Settings. BTW why Gigabyte removed this menu from setup?!), but can be seen and configured only with AMIBCP tool. BIOS modding and flashing is required and there's risk of bricking board. If someone knows better, non-invasive way to change value of this option, please let me know!
*PCI Latency Timer - explanation Tech ARP -
PCI Latency Timer
Changing default value of 32 cycles to 64 or 96 helped people with X-Fi to make their sound cards not behave bad.
When sound card's driver isn't installed, card operates in UAA mode - no problem with sound, but it's not possible to use capabilities of main sound chip at all.
When sound card's driver is installed, card operates in 20K1 mode (20K1 means main sound chip, CA20K1) - clicks and pops but only when audio is played and no disk access happens. Happens only when Intel SATA driver is installed. OS-independent, checked also on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
So playback works fine, but recording... sometimes it records, sometimes not and when wave finally appears in Audacity - it's broken. http://i64.tinypic.com/bfpes9.png
Already excluded card damage, because on two differents systems recording is good. The #1 was my previous Core 2 Quad on Gigabyte 965P-S3, the #2 - ancient Pentium III on Abit BX133-RAID (with 440BX chipset). These two were running Windows 7 (32-bit), and #1 was also running Windows 10 x64.
Nothing comes to my mind besides PCI bus being native on these two computers (on Z170-HD3P PCI bus is provided by ASM1083 bridge chip and maybe that's culprit?) and *PCI Latency Timer option, which happens to exist in BIOS/UEFI (look for PCI Subsystem Settings. BTW why Gigabyte removed this menu from setup?!), but can be seen and configured only with AMIBCP tool. BIOS modding and flashing is required and there's risk of bricking board. If someone knows better, non-invasive way to change value of this option, please let me know!
*PCI Latency Timer - explanation Tech ARP -
PCI Latency Timer
Changing default value of 32 cycles to 64 or 96 helped people with X-Fi to make their sound cards not behave bad.
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