Performance issues after enabling onboard sound

[_Ties]

I just completed my living room gaming PC, but I'm having some issues. The PC in question is quite bad, but built just from leftover components.

It's based on a HP compaq dc7800p small form factor PC with an C2D e6550 and 2x1GB DDR2 667MHz memory, and running an EVGA GTX570 HD powered by a second PSU.
The GPU is totally overkill, but I had one left over, so I used it.

I tested the PC yesterday and ran burnout paradise for about 2 hours at a perfectly playable frame rate without any issues. Only sound wasn't working at that point. I installed some other software like RealVNC so i could update any settings on the PC without having to get a keyboard, and I started investigating the audio issue.

I found out that sound wasn't working because the BIOS of the HP motherboard detected the HDMI output of my GPU and automatically turned of the onboard sound on the motherboard.
Having figured out why the sound wasn't working, I went in to the BIOS and turned the onboard sound back on.

Today I tried playing burnout again, but it was totally unplayable and kept freezing for 1-2 seconds. I wasn't sure what the issue was, so first I uninstalled RealVND, but that didn't work. Than I reset the BIOS to the default configuration (witch worked fine before apart from the sound) but that didn't help either. Then I reinstalled windows 7 (still with the default BIOS settings) and everything seemed fine again. I went back in to the BIOS to enable onboard audio, and the game started lagging again. I disabled it again, but still lagging.

So the only conclusion I can come to is that turning on the onboard audio causes the issue, but strangely turning it of doesn't solve the issue.

If anyone has any idea why this is happening or how to solve it and still get a sound output, I'd really appreciate your input.

[_Ties]

After some more testing around, it seems to have nothing to do with the BIOS audio settings.
I got it working again after I noticed what seemed to be a memory leak when I opened task manager to shutdown a frozen program. Ending the task that was eating all of my system memory seemed to get everything running smoothly again. Now I just have to figure out what exactly is causing the memory leak and how to stop it in the future.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

What app did u have to close out?
What all is running in the background.
Basically there should not really be any 3rd party apps running in the background.
Nothing u'd really need to run while playing games anyways.

[_Ties]

Messaggio originale di Bad-Motha:

What app did u have to close out?
What all is running in the background.
Basically there should not really be any 3rd party apps running in the background.
Nothing u'd really need to run while playing games anyways.

The proces I had to end was svchost.exe, but it was a clean install of windows 7 home premium 64 bit, with just google chrome, steam and graphics drivers installed.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

What Motherboard and/or Onboard Audio is it that you have?

And a clean install of Win7; make sure u get the latest installed for all these:
- .NET Framework 3.5 / 4.0 / 4.6
- Visual C++ Runtimes (2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015; redist packages, both x86 and x64 of each)
- DirectX Runtimes (Redist June 2010)

[_Ties]

Messaggio originale di Bad-Motha:

What Motherboard and/or Onboard Audio is it that you have?

And a clean install of Win7; make sure u get the latest installed for all these:
- .NET Framework 3.5 / 4.0 / 4.6
- Visual C++ Runtimes (2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015; redist packages, both x86 and x64 of each)
- DirectX Runtimes (Redist June 2010)

I don't know exactly what motherboard or onboard audio. The PC is based on a HP small form factor office PC, so it's probably a rather specific board made by/for HP.

I did have a problem where my graphics driver instalation would freeze while installing .NET frameworks, so I had to skip them. I'l see if I can install the .NET frameworks separately, and report back.

[[☥] - CJ -]

Best thing to do is to update the soundcard drivers, windows update may or may not have done that.

Goto the device manager, click on Sound, it should tell you what soundcard you have.

As for figuring out what motherboard you have, download CPU-Z or CPUID HWmonitor, both can tell you what motherboard you have.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Skip them? Drivers require .NET Framework; u can't just skip that.

If you have Win10 however; u can't install it the usual ways; u must go to Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows Features On/Off > then select the options for .NET and ASP Frameworks; select them and click OK to install; then choose "Get via Windows Updates"

If Audio really is the issue; go to device manager; go down to the Sound Devices and disable each of those. Now reboot; then run a CPU/GPU benchmark; such as Unigine Heaven; if the Audio Devices were your issue; u should now see good performance. If not then they were never your issue.

[_Ties]

Messaggio originale di Bad-Motha:

Skip them? Drivers require .NET Framework; u can't just skip that.

If you do an advanced install for nvidia drivers you can manually select what packages you do and don't want, including a checkbox for .NET frameworks. The driver install gave a warning about it, but seemed to compleet successfully, and windows correctly reported my GPU after installation. But just in case I will install the .NET frameworks and run my GPU driver install again.

Will report back tonight after installing the .NET frameworks and doing some more testing.

[Prowlcorp]

It just lets you toggle them off incase you already have them

[Bad 💀 Motha]

No, NVIDIA does not come with .NET Framework
Never has

You get that from Microsoft

[_Ties]

I just installed the .NET frameworks and reinstalled my NVIDIA drivers, but the issue remained.

I did some more googeling, and someone suggested disabling the windows update service, and that seems to have fixed it.
And thinking about it, this is a plausible explanation. Both times I think the issue started after the first reboot of the system while it was connected to the internet.
So I guess the onboard sound option in the BIOS was just coincidence, and had nothing to do with the actual problem.

Anyway, thank you guys very much for all the feedback!

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Well Windows Updates should never be set to AUTO
Notify ONLY

I mean given the system specs; it is using Win7 right?
Cause there will be zero point to putting any other WinOS on it.