VIA 686B Southbridge Data Corruption

December 19, 2001: VIA Hardware has a new version of their PCI latency utility. It may improve audio quality problems and avoid the IDE data corruption.

VIA Arena has an article written by a VIA engineer that states simply:

The Sound Blaster Live! Drivers were not to PCI specifications. This caused too much noise over the PCI bus. The engineers had to work out a way to filter this noise and released a patch to motherboard manufacturers which replicates a BIOS change.

It also seems to imply that the flaw exists in 1st and 2nd generation Live! cards but not the 3rd generation:

Creative at this stage also fixed the issue with a new revision of the Sound Blaster Live! called the Sound Blaster Live! 5.1. So using a 5.1, I can go back to the original BIOS with no issues.

VIA Hardware has an informative article titled VIA 686B and Sound Cards, exploring the origins and causes of the data corruption bug.

More Information

VIAHardware has a FAQ on the data corruption issue. There is an interesting paragraph in their FAQ which states that the 4-in-1 drivers do not solve the corruption problems with 5.1 cards. They only work with the non-5.1 cards.

Another reason this might happen is that you do not have a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live card installed in your computer. The “fix” from VIA, which is included in the 4-in-1 4.31 drivers or as standalone, only works for those computers which have the 686b Southbridge, and an SBLive card.

Therefore, if you have an SBLive 5.1 the patch will not fix your problem – the best bet for fixing this problem is to again update or downgrade the bios for your motherboard. If this doesn’t help it is suggested that you try one of George Breese’s patches, which could solve your issue.

To be safe, upgrade your BIOS to the latest version, and check that the manufacturer has acknowledged in their BIOS history that this particular problem is fixed.

Editorial: SBLive! Contributes to Data Corruption Glitch
April 17, 2001 - Clarence

A German hardware site discovered a glitch bug in the 686B southbridge of the popular KT133A chipset for AMD CPUs. Large DMA data transfers between hard drives on separate IDE channels caused data corruption. The presence of a Sound Blaster Live! worsens the problem. See this news article at The Register. Read the English translation of the tests performed.

VIA has acknowledged the problem and will issue a BIOS patch soon. Meanwhile, there is a fix available here. Alternatively, you can use these BIOS settings that have been reported to work:

PCI Delay Transaction: 0 or off
PCI Master Read Caching: 0 or off
PCI Latency: any value from 0 to 32

Static Problems: Who's To Blame?

If you're waiting for the companies to officially acknowledge the existence of the static & clicking problems that so many of us are experiencing, forget it. Unlike the data corruption glitch which can be duplicated under certain conditions, the static problems many have experienced have so far been mostly random and not easily duplicated.

A solution that works for one machine, does not work for another. So far, this issue has been limited to newsgroup and forum postings, not the front page of The Register or Anandtech, so its not "red alert" for the manufacturers.

With such random variables, Creative and VIA probably see no need to address this issue. I have not seen any indication that they are working to solve this problem. Give a call to Creative tech support and they'll read to you their usual troubleshooting list (change PCI slot, reinstall Live!Ware, etc. etc.). Call your motherboard manufacturer and they'll tell you its your crappy sound card. So who's to be believed?

The class-action lawsuit brought against Zip drive maker Iomega for the "click of death" problem resulted in a settlement where Iomega will rebate every Zip drive or Zip disk manufactured from January 1995 to March 19, 2001. In Iomega's case, the problem was replicable, but not so for the Sound Blaster Live! problems. Your best bet? Return the card before the money-back guarantee expires.

Good Hardware & Drivers

Something's got to be wrong. How can a mere sound card contribute to and worsen the data corruption? Either the hardware design and/or drivers of the motherboard and/or sound card are at fault. It may be easy to shift the blame to Creative, but VIA also has had some minor problems with their motherboard chipsets, while Intel-based motherboards usually experience less compatibility issues. (Note however that the VIA 686B southbridge chip is used on some Intel motherboards too.)

Creative may have designed the Sound Blaster Live! and its drivers to utilize the PCI bus inefficiently, or pushed it close to the PCI specs' limits that makes it sensitive to differing PCI bus & timings. Here's a quote from Pinnacle Systems, a company specializing in video capture solutions which have problems with Sound Blaster cards (taken from page 3 of the test report):

"According to Pinnacles observations, Liveware seems to permanently transfer null-bytes over the PCI bus to the SB Live, even at times when it does not have to play notes. In the worst case, this destroys up to 30 % of a system's PCI bandwidth (that's why we noticed it on video-capturing ...). Deactivating SB Live's MIDI functions stops this behavior."

PCI timing, which seems to be somewhat critical anyway, is extremely burdened in such a case, thus making the error rate explode. And what's got Creative Support to say? Right: nothing!

Sounds like bad driver programming, or inefficiencies in the EMU10K1 design, requiring it to be fed useless null-bytes to keep it operating. Either way, the SBLive! is a PCI bus hog.

On the other hand, VIA chipsets have been known to be more flaky in their PCI support (among other things). Either way, a PCI bus and PCI peripheral have to work hand in hand for things to work. When one side is less tolerant of the other, something gives and you'll get problems like data corruption and the dreaded static, clicking & popping.

And of course, Microsoft plays a part in this game too. If their OS is inefficient and unstable, forget about having hardware that works correctly. It may even make it seem like your hardware sucks.

Let's Do Something To Help

This has been going on for more than a year, so don't expect the companies to get their act together and solve this problem now. I propose this way to best help everybody out:

I personally have been receiving too many e-mails from users which usually goes something like this: "I have a Sound Blaster xxx, and when I play a MP3 there is clicks, pops and all sorts of noises. WHY?" I believe many of you who frequent the newsgroups are frustrated that now and then, yet another unlucky user will post a message, citing the same problem again.

If you have managed to solve the static problems, and it is not already "discovered" and documented by someone else, please send in a writeup on how you managed to solve your problems. With your contribution, I hope the troubleshooting page will be comprehensive and contain all the solutions that have worked. When someone asks in the newsgroups, direct them to this page.

Your Views?

I've updated the poll to find out what you think of the static & clicking problems. If you have your opinions to add, you can also send them to me.

Your Experiences

Here are some of your experiences with this problem. If you have any more information to share, send them in!