Sound problems

[stuporman]

I've got a new system with the follwoing spec:
Athlon Phenom ii X5 955 processor
ASUS M4N78 m/b
8 GB Ram
ATI Radeon 4980 1gb graphics
250 GB hard disk drive
700w PSU
Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit

Everything is great apart form the sound. Every minute or so the sound slows regardless of what I play (Itunes, CDs, DVDs, etc). The m/b uses with Realtek Audio Manager - reading various posts about Realtek shows this to be a common issue. I've downloaded their lastest driver via the ASUS website but no change.
Can anyone suggest how to overcome this problem?
Is the answer going to be to buy a sound card (in which any suggestions)?

Any help greatfully received.

 

[leo2kp]

If you've been able to find out that this is a common issue, were you able to find if there is a solution for those people? If not, then I would go with a card.

My personal choice is a middle-of-the-road Sound Blaster X-Fi.

 

[captaincharisma]

there are also places that still sell Creative's Audigy SE cards for like 30-40 bucks too

 

[stuporman]

If you've been able to find out that this is a common issue, were you able to find if there is a solution for those people? If not, then I would go with a card.

My personal choice is a middle-of-the-road Sound Blaster X-Fi.

Out of the many posts only a few seem to have found solutions, and those are generally with XP. The few with Vista fixs are achieved by driver updates. No luck for me there as I already have the latest driver.
It seems a bit of a con to have a m/b with onboard audio that doesn't work properly. I expect I'll have to fork out even more for a sound card - X-FI is what I was considering. Thanks for the confirmation of the way to go.

 

[chedrz]

Did you think about an RMA to replace the motherboard? I mean, I would go that route to see if it's strictly a mobo issue before I'd go fork out $100+ for a sound card.

 

[stuporman]

So strange. Re-installed windows (

 

[stuporman]

What I meant to sat was:
So strange. Re-installed windows ( ), then ALL the drivers ( ), finishinf witht he RealTek sound driver. Since then no problems and back to listening to the Kings of Metal in perfecto.
Thanks for those who posted - kept me from just going for the new sound card option and saving some ££s.