when ever I play a game anything that is more complex than shooting sounds gets a very noticable static noise in its background. now it only happens in games when there's 3D audio involved. it doesn't happen when listenning to music or watching movies. I tryed switching back to the O/B AC97 and it doesn't happen there. is it a problem with the sound card or the drivers? I'm using drivers version 5.12.2.296. the speakers are Inspire T5400 (5.1), though I'm pretty sure they're not the problem.

יכול להיות שיחס האות לרעש גבוהה מידיי לרמקולים , אז בבקרת עוצמה תחליש את עוצמת בקול לחצי ותראה אם זה נמשך..

nope, didn't help, didn't think it would either, since then I would still have the problem with music and movies.

well I managed to fix the problem (so it seems so far...). I "downgraded" the drivers. the latest drivers and the driver's patch sucks and were the cause for the problem.

the solution is:

- install the driver that came with card (not needed if you don't want any of the programs that come with the card like AudioHQ and Surround Mixer).

- install driver version 5.12.1.253 (it will first tell you that the drivers you have are newer than you are installing, click ok. it will start installing then you'll get BSoD, probably due to overwriting a used driver file. anyway, restart and install again. this time there shouldn't be no problem. obviously, you won't encounter the BSoD if this is the first driver installation.).

you can get the driver (5.12.1.253) from www.station-drivers.com , you can't get it from the creative's web site or any driver version for that matter only fixes that doesn't work, so DON'T LOSS THE CD.

thanks to Pavel and Oren from ZigZag2000 for the link.