PC Processors

[Cravenunicorn68]

Hi everyone,

After upgrading to my 7800X3D, GIGABYTE B650 AORUS ELITE AX V2, Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 6000MHz I started experiencing game braking sound issues - the audio is delayed by anything from 10s to multiple minutes and the localization is faulty too.

It occurs using a sound card - Creative Sound Blaster Zx, when plugged in to MOBO audio it works fine.

The problem here is that the MOBO audio is not good enough, nor is my cable long enough to have it plugged in.

It occurs in multiple games War Thunder  being the main one, PUGB and Heroes of the Storm.

Creative is blaming this on Zen Infinity Fabric tech:

"After investigating the issues with AMD, we have identified that the audio issues you are experiencing are due to an unstable processor overclock. Data for peripheral devices, such as audio cards or USB devices, traverses the Infinity Fabric on AMD Ryzen processors. The Infinity Fabric exists within the Ryzen CPU, and it connects most of the ports and slots on a motherboard to the CPU cores so they may communicate. If the user has implemented a Fabric/DRAM overclock that is not truly stable, communication errors in the Fabric/DRAM can manifest as audio distortion or delays. AMD Ryzen processors officially support DDR4-3200 (1600MHz Infinity Fabric clock), and speeds beyond this point cannot be guaranteed or supported by the product warranty. While we understand and appreciate that users want to overclock their system, instability is always a risk, and such instabilities may not be revealed by conventional memory stress testing.

AMD is currently working with the community to further investigate these issues, and you can find out more here.

If you are encountering such issues, we would advise you to contact AMD or the motherboard/system manufacturer for further assistance".

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any support elsewhere and I have tried to reinstall the drivers, everything is up to date.

Would you recommend me to downclock the CPU and RAM? I'm a bit reluctant to do that, else why have I upgraded if I have to downclock the new HW.

Thank you.

Regards,

Jan.

[elstaci · Accepted solution]

First according to Creative Labs Support your Sound Card is "End of Line" which means it is not supported anymore by the manufacturer: https://support.creative.com/Products/ProductDetails.aspx?prodID=21384&prodName=Sound%20Blaster%20Zx...

Found this Creative Labs driver for the Creative Sound Blaster Z se which is still supported by Creative Labs: https://support.creative.com/downloads/welcome.aspx?nLanguageLocale=1033&nOS=72&nDriverType=0#type_0

Under Compatibility is shows the driver is compatible with your Sound Blaster Zx card:

Personally this sound like a issue with Creative Labs since I haven't heard of other manufacturer's sound cards having issues with AMD Ryzen processors.

I would make sure you have the latest Non-BETA BIOS version installed for compatibility issues and install the above latest driver and see if it helps any.

In BIOS there are settings that automatically overclock safely the Ryzen processors like PBO as an example. If PBO is enabled try, temporarily, disabling PBO in BIOS and see if your sound issues improves or not.

[Cravenunicorn68]

Hi elstaci,

Thank you very much for your time.

Jan.

[FunkZ]

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@Cravenunicorn68 wrote:

After upgrading to my 7800X3D, GIGABYTE B650 AORUS ELITE AX V2, Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 6000MHz I started experiencing game braking sound issues

Creative is blaming this on Zen Infinity Fabric tech:

AMD Ryzen processors officially support DDR4-3200 (1600MHz Infinity Fabric clock), and speeds beyond this point cannot be guaranteed or supported by the product warranty.

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The response from Creative does not even address the correct generation of memory and processor that you have. However, as @elstaci pointed out, your sound card is marked "end of service life" by the manufacturer and no longer supported.

https://support.creative.com/Products/ProductDetails.aspx?prodID=21384&prodName=Sound+Blaster+Zx

Either use the onboard or purchase a supported external audio processor.