ARC A770 & Re-Bar Audio Issues

[n64robert]

Since switching to the A770 from Nvidia, I've experienced audio issues. Mainly stutters and hitching, usually when loading new web pages, especially Youtube.

I reinstalled Windows 11, and the issue persists. The strangest part is that it doesn't matter whether I have the audio go through the Displayport to my monitor, the 3.5mm headphone jack on the motherboard or through my Steelseries GameDAC. It happens to all of them.

That is until I turn Re-BAR OFF. Since doing that, the issue has gone completely. The motherboard is on the latest bios, and all drivers are up to date.  

I also tried putting my Nvidia card back in and all the issues went away immediately.

Full system Specs:

Intel 12700K

Z690 TUF GAMING Wifi D4 - Bios 2204

64GB RAM

A770 16GB

Latest Drivers and Bios as of 18/01/2023.

I hope this can be resolved because it's very frustrating, and so much performance is lost when Re-Bar is off isn't acceptable.

[Robert_Q_Intel]

Hello @n64robert,

Thank you for posting on the Intel®️ Arc communities.

Thank you for sharing with us your issue and the steps that have tried so far, as we gather as much information as possible in every thread please share with us the following information: 

When you review your device manager, do you observe any error messages?

Do you experience any pop-up notifications regarding new devices being prepared while using the computer?

Have you reseated the card properly in the PCI-E port?

 Download and run Intel® System Support Utility for Windows* make sure to check the box "Everything"

and save the resulting .txt file you can attach it to your reply.

Link for Intel® System Support Utility for Windows*

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/18377/intel-system-support-utility-for-windows.html

Best regards,  

Robert Q. 

Intel Customer Support Technician

[n64robert]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your reply. 

Reviewing Device Manager there are no error messages and everything seems to be installed correctly.

I only get messages preparing new devices when I plug something new in which I would expect to happen.

Cards been reseating when I switched graphics cards back so yeah that's been done. 

Txt file attached as requested!

Thanks

[Robert_Q_Intel]

Hello @n64robert

Thank you for posting your reply.

We have gathered the information that you have shared with us and also the reports and steps that have been done so far, and we will continue to perform research on this topic.

We will get in touch with you as soon as we have more details.

Best regards,  

Robert Q. 

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello n64robert

We are still investigating this issue. We have some suggestions and we also need some extra information from you:

1.-Please share with us a short video showing this issue as it will be useful to try to replicate it.

2.-Does the same issue happen if you disconnect the SteelSeries GameDAC?

3.-Please use the Display Driver Uninstaller(DDU) to completely remove the previous driver from your third-party GPU.

4.-Please try an older driver like driver version 30.0.101.3490 just to discard any regression, if the issue persists you can roll back to the latest driver and you can also test the latest BETA driver 30.0.101.4090 that recently came out.

5.-Please run the Intel® System Support Utility and attach the log file to get more information about your system.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[n64robert]

1. Getting a video of the issues isn't really easy for me but with more time I may be able to get one done.

2. Same issue happens if I disconnect the GameDAC

3. Third party GPU hasn't ever been plugged in on this fresh installation of windows and thus there are no drivers to uninstall.

4. Issue has been present on the last 3 retail driver versions and persists in the latest BETA version.

5. Attached.

As before disabling Re-BAR fixes the issue completely.

The issue seems to occur whenever there is a CPU spike when loading a heavy webpage or a Adobe program etc. However tryng to replicate it though a single thread CPU stress test doesn't prompt it. 

I'll keep testing.

Thanks

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello n64robert

We highly appreciate all the information that h you have provided. Please send us the short video showing the issue once you are able to record it and have spare time to do so. The video is needed so we can investigate and try to reproduce this issue. In case you cannot provide the video please let us know.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[n64robert]

Hi Hugo,

I've done my best to catch it on video. You couldn't really hear the first couple of tries, but I got a capture where you can hear it. 

The easiest way I found to provoke it was to have youtube open and play something and then open a heavy program like Adobe Photoshop; this is precisely what I did in the video.

The skips match perfectly with the dropped frames on the stats for nerds as well, so you should be able to match it up.

To be clear, this issue happens with other things, not just Youtube, but it was most reliable in reproducing it. 

https://youtu.be/b3LDZ2md6xw

If there is anything else I can do to help please let me know

Many Thanks

[Hugo_Intel]

Hello n64robert

Thank you for all the information. We will continue researching this issue with the information we have at the moment. In case we need more information or once I have an update for you I will post back.

Best Regards,

Hugo O.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[arc750le_dolbyatmos]

This is a persistent issue with ARC cards. I just bought one, and I can't use it with Dolby Atmos at all. I know it is not a Dolby Access issue because I have used it with my GTX 960 GPU for years on an old computer. I built a new computer and ARC 750 audio does not work once I install Dolby Access. Or, it keeps stuttering and cutting out. If I connect the HDMI cable to the motherboard outlet, audio works perfectly fine. 

I really wanted to support Intel, but I am probably going to return my ARC 750 tomorrow. I see people have been waiting for weeks to fix this issue, and I don't want the return clock running out while I wait. 

[arc750le_dolbyatmos]

Using display port was also not a complete solution. I further found out that Ray tracing was not working on Witcher 3 with this GPU even though the settings say Ray tracing is on.

RT aside, I couldn't live with the audio issues and I was forced to return the ARC GPU. I don't have any of these issues with my other GPU, so much for my experiment.

Good luck everyone

[JannyWoo]

Hi Hugo,

I'm experiencing the same issue as described above on my Serpent Canyon intel NUC. Default BIOS settings, latest WHQL drivers and Windows 11 22H2.

Upon boot, everything is fine. And the first piece of media I play works fine too. Once that closes the issue starts and persists until reboot. Micro-stuttering of audio and the OS in general. 

Disabling ReBAR or disabling the A770M entirely are the only solutions.

[noineeL]

I hope intel is still working on this, i have the same issue and is driving me crazy....i'm really liking the card but this is a deal breaker

and even worse is that it doesn't look like its been looked at according to the known issues on the change logs in the drivers....

[Valhalla]

I just bought the arc 770, was going crazy trying to figure out what caused the audio issues. I'm glad I stumbled across this thread, I had to disable the resizable bar for audio to behave somewhat normal.. i sure hope these issues are being addressed asap.

[arc750le_dolbyatmos]

I found a way to work around this. Initial testing for an hour seems to indicate this will work.

I bought a display port to HDMI cable and connected that to my AVR - audio has not dropped since then. Looks like bad drivers or bad HDMI port. Can you try this and let me know too?

[theflakes]

Having the same issue on a Serpent Canyon NUC with an a770. Today "windows key + shift + s" for partial screen capture stopped working. Then I tried to open the Windows 11 start menu and audio crackling started. I tried to restart all Intel Windows service but it didn't help. I had to reboot to get that key combo to work again.

[Steevenoo]

Hi all,

Same problem here, the only way to fix this problem is to turn off the rebar 😔

[theflakes]

Yesterday I went through and forced all my desktop apps and MS store apps to use the Xe iGPU. So far, no more audio issues. Found in "System -> Display -> Graphics".

[Steevenoo]

it doesn't fix it

[noineeL]

how is it possible that there is no update on this....multiple posts complaining about this huge issue with Arc and the bug isn't even listed in the known bugs during patch notes on the drivers....

[Steevenoo]

it's hard to believe especially with a full Intel configuration 🙄