RealTek AC'97 Audio "drop-outs"

[Deus]

Hello all, I decided to ask personally from others rather than google for the rest of my life for this little problem ...

I recently googled for some help over my sound card, RealTek AC'97, and I have experienced named "drop-outs", as if a sound frame is lost. I have read the article about the issue, and I believe my jumpers are correctly. Yet it doesn't still work right, unless every time I turn my comp on, I reinstall the drivers and reboot.

I have checked BIOS, which says everything is "OK". I have also checked some other options from my comp, yet non of them seem to work. It hadn't crossed my mind that the problem could be in the hardware.

Here are my specs, since You are going to ask for them anyways:

Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI
Processor: AMD Athlon 64bit 3500+ (2.2GHz)
Display Adapter: ATI Radeon X800 XT
Operating System: Windows XP Professional

Thanks in advance.

One option could be just to forget the crap and get a Sound Blaster to do the work ...

[glc]

I'd go with the Soundblaster option. Some of today's onboard audio is actually quite good, yours is decent, but the fact remains that onboard audio is just a bunch of software codecs (AC 97) and drivers that require a lot of CPU cycles and system resources to operate. A good soundcard will do a lot more of this processing on the card itself. It's like the difference between a software "winmodem" and a hardware controlled modem.

[Deus]

I'd still appreciate it if I'd get this one work, since I don't want to burn extra money on another sound card.

Now it's doing volume swings. This sound card is pure &#¤%.

[zoobie]

I have the same audio....pure carp. They actually tout this when selling low end systems. You could spend several weeks trying to make it work properly...and still not be successful.
I'm also of the opinion that you'd have to read no less than 100 hours to avoid being ripped off with all computer hardware and software out there...maybe 200.