K7S5A with BAD onboard sound 1

[ravewunner]

I just built an economy system with
K7S5A Mainboard
AthlonXP 1800+ CPU
256MB DDR RAM

The sound works unless the computer is doing something else. For example, if I'm playing Winamp, it sounds fine, but if I'm scrolling down a web page it sounds like it's underwater. It sounds the same with all combinations
of these:

2 different sets of speakers
Onboard Sound
Hercules Muse Sound Card
No Sound Card
Onboard Sound turned off
all other devices turned off (onboard lan and modem)

In my other computer both sets of speakers work and so does the sound card, so I'm sure it's neither of those.
I've tried finding new drivers for the 97' Audio or for the mainboard itself, but I was unable to.

 

[ravewunner]

Follow UP.......

My games are practically unplayable cause the sound is so horrible.
Like I said, it sounds fine unless the computer has to do something else

 

[attrofy]

Do you happen to which revision of the BIOS you are running? Check their main site for updates (

http://www.ecs.com.tw/).

Also, try

http://www.amdmb.com

- they have forums dedicated to ECS and alot of people seem to have had good luck with them.

 

[paparazi]

I know the first version of this board had some compatibility issues with certain setups (not sure about sound) I had a recent problem that eventually resulted in a board swop out! But I have to be honest, if it hadn't been new and in warranty I would have tried flashing the bios before taking it back for an exchange as it was I have a very understanding parts retailer.
The troubled board had a 4* in the lower left corner where as the replacement had something like version 3.01 I think.
There are bios updates for this board. Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!

 

[railugh]

http://www.ecsusa.com/ecsusa/www.ecs.com.tw/download/driver/k7s.htm

the above link will provide you with the most recent drivers for you MB


the following will provide you with the bios update and the revisions made

http://www.ecsusa.com/ecsusa/www.ecs.com.tw/download/k7s5a.htm

hope this helps ... good luck

 

[ravewunner]

OK, well I kind of stumbled on the fix

Leave it to ECS Motherboards for this crap.
BTW, I emailed ECS with a detailed problem about this over a week ago to both the American and German tech support and yet to hear anything from them.

Anyway, I had my new Radeon 8500 video card on it's way via UPS.
I've been trying to fix this problem for quite some time because I really don't want to play games with crappy sound.
I was full ready to go buy another motherboard and be done with it...
So, today my Radeon8500 showed up and I installed it....
Oh what a beautiful thing.... (I had a Voodoo3)

Anyway,
I started up my some Return To Castle Wolfenstein to see what she looked like and after about 20 minutes of playing............... I noticed the sound was just fine.
HUH????
I did about 20 more minutes of testing with everything I could think of to interrupt the sound and found no more problems.
Now that's some weird crap.
My Voodoo3 was PCI and the Radeon is AGP.
Last week when I was having the problem, I switched the PCI slots around with the sound card, but never the video card. Who would have known?

Now on to some serious game play

Hope this helps somebody.

 

[paparazi]

It may also be worth mentioning that these particular boards run much better with DDR ram.
Over the past few weeks I have seen several issues with locking up on systems fitted with this board, differant configurations and components but all using SDram and all cured by swopping over to DDR.
Strange I know!! Martin Vote if you found this post helpful please!!