Even be more confused

[kwokwai]

Hey, today, a man from Creative sends me another email, suggesting me to follow the steps as follows:

Peer Concurrency: Toggle this setting
PCI 2.1 Support: PCI 2.1 must be enabled
Spread Spectrum Control: Toggle this setting
PCI Latency Timer: Try different values, starting with 32
Memory Hole: Toggle this setting
Try lowering the Hardware Acceleration of the Graphics Card


Peer Concurrency, Spread Spectrum Control -- never hear their names before!
I have seen the PCI Latency Timer in BIOS setting, but don't know what it is for. ( May I start with 72 or a random number higher than 100?)

PCI 2.1 Support: How can I ensure the PCI has been enabled?

Memory hole? What is it?
I have heard about security hole before, are they referring to the same thing!

Lowering the Hardware Acceleration of Graphic card? Is it a must to do so?
My PC is old but it has a 3GHZ-CPU, 1GB PC-3200 RAM, GrandMars ATI RADEON 9550 128MB DDR Vedio Card,
Two MAXTOR 80GB HD (7200rpm, 2, 8MB Buffer)....
That should be enough for gaming, I think!


I have replied to the email, but they seem to be not patient to me any more...
may be annoyed by my many questions...:D


Please help me if you could!
(I would like to learn more, even though the problem has already been solved)

[bear]

Obviously most of these settings are in the setup section of the soundcard? Is there a control panel for the card?

[kwokwai]

Obviously most of these settings are in the setup section of the soundcard? Is there a control panel for the card?


Yes, but most of them can't be found in the UI.
I think the man were suggesting me to make new setting through the BIOS.

Do you know what it is about - the Latency setting?:confused:

[bear]

PCI latency, I found this:
PCI latency is the amount of "wait" time PCI is allocated to communicate with any given peripheral. Lower numbers give less time and larger numbers give more time.
In some cases, lower numbers give better performance but can also cause instabilities. Many PCI peripherals set this to defaults and override user settings within BIOS.
This number is often set by system board makers to "32".
This is for 2 reasons, width of the bus and speed of the bus. In many cases, setting this setting at anything other then defaults makes no real change as most peripherals set this at the hardware level. The intent is to allow enough time for a device to complete a data transfer before the CPU moves on to service other interupts. In this, the CPU can manage a transfer and still service other interupts with minimal throughput loss. In the original PCI set-up, this setting was equal to the number of PCI slots. In this, the slots closest to the "inside" of the board (closest to the keyboard connector) had faster access to CPU time. This is still the case to some degree.

Manufacturers usually start with 32 as a value, and having to tweak this just to get a sound card to work properly sounds a bit daft to me. Note that incorrect settings can cause larger problems than bad sound...

If you read that quote above carefully, it mentions that the slot used might make a difference in the card's performance. Have you tried moving the card to a different slot?

[kwokwai]

I leave the setting alone, it remains 32!