Hi my first post so bear with me.

I purchased a AMD RADEON HD7970 and the audio is diabolical.  It sutters on windows sounds, youtube, mp3's basically everything.

When i load a game up the sound is fine, just on about everything else it cuts in and out constantly!

The cards hasnt been OC'd or anything.  All stock settings straight out the box.  Also tried new HDMI cables!

I have this isssue with 12.10.  So i decided to try the beta drives 12.11 beta11 and have exactly the same issue?  

My rig is as follows

Windows 7 Home 64bit

ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 Gen 3 + lastest BIOS

Samsung 48" full hd tv + Samsung S22B350H 22"

Intel i7 Processor 3.4ghz (stock),

16GB Corsair Vengance RAM,

Radeon HD 7970(stock),

Samsung Pro 840 series 256GB SSD

Corsair Enthusiasts 650w PSU

Please help, or just advise as if the issue is known and hasnt been resolved before then i can send it back as i brought it new a week ago.

The issue is modern graphics cards have built in power states (3 to be exact) so that you are not running balls to the wall 100$ of the time and when it is not needed.

1. On a 2D desktop
2. when playing movies
3. when gaming in 3D

When you are playing a 3D game your card is running at it's stated (marketed) frequency which allows the card enough power to render both graphics as well as sound.  When you are running at a lesser power stated there seems to be not enough juice to allow the card to do both so that the end result is a decent picture but less than attractive sound quality.

You can try any of the options below to see if it helps or not.

• Go into your registry and do a search for "EnableULPS" (Ultra Low Power States) and change the value to off ("0" I think).  Reboot and test.
• Download/install RBE which will allow you to remove your card's C states and set them all to full freq and voltages.
• Create a profile in CCC and set it to load with Windows, then find the XML that was generated, change the values to frequency levels for the three C states.

Let us know how your testing goes.

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.
Requiescat In Pace AMD Processor Forums | Member since: 1/19/2009 | Post count: 4142
Please don't PM me with questions, instead create a thread so that everyone can assist and benefit from the knowledge provided. Thanks in advance!

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, the ULPS i thought was for crossfire and doesnt help with single cards?  However i tried anyway and did not resolve the issue.

The card is idle status when not in use as you say to save energy,  but when i start a MKV movie or a simple mp3 shouldn't it recognise that the audio or gpu clock would need increasing just for the audio or am i missing something?

Surely if i start a movie the card should up what is needed to work correctly? 

The audio will only work 100% when i increase the idle clock from 300mhz to 500mhz, which is within the max 925mhz anyway.

But should a user have to do this? Shouldnt it be able to do this out the box itself? I have never known a issue like this before.  I have a Alienware laptop M17 R3 with a AMD 6970M card in and i dont have to do this either, just knows and increases when it needs and you hear the fans kick in when needed, SIMPLES!

Surely AMD cant expected people to increase clock speeds, or registry enteries and install third party apps to make its own card work correctly??

Ideally... no, you wouldn't have to do any of that, but there's a more simple solution than fiddling with clock speeds.  Just don't use the HDMI audio.  Your video card is just passing through the audio that's integrated into your motherboard, so hook your speakers directly up to that instead.

Sometimes the best we can do is to pick which solution we find the least irritating. 

Do not meddle in the affairs of archers, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Post Count: +8510
Troll Hunter

The opinions expressed above do not represent those of Advanced Micro Devices or any of their affiliates.

I really appreciate the feedback, but unfortunately its a dual monitor setup, the HDMI is for my 46" tv hench the reason for the HDMi with sound so i can watch a movie, while the kids or my wife does the internet stuff.  I have speakers but only used for her facebook or games.  Would be weird to use my desktop speakers for my HD tv with surround sound :/

Is there anyway i could report this directly to AMD? If they have no solutions then i'll simply return it and get a different card.

Here are the contact options for AMD...perhaps a phone call?

http://forums.amd.com/game/messageview.cfm?catid=444&threadid=161716&enterthread=y

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