9800GTX+ SPDIF

[J-Mag]

Well I had to grab a 9800 at the nearby Best Buy the other week because my 8800gt fried, but I have noticed that the newer cards enable the bitstream for audio over DVI/HDMI even if you don't have the spdif connector hooked up. This disables my audio input for the HDMI port on the TV.

I guess I could try to find the spdif cable (if a 4pin to 2pin type even exists), but I'm not even sure that would work because I thought DVI couldn't carry the signal. I am using a DVI to HDMI cable to connect video to my HDTV the same setup worked fine with my older 8800gt... Maybe it's the newer drivers that cause this (using 174.28 vista 32)?

Is there a way to disable this "feature" in the 17X.xx drivers?

Edit: Just got off the phone with BFG tech support and they won't even provide me with one of the internal SPDIF 2pin cables, because "the 9800gtx+ isn't supposed to come with one". Some of their other products do. WTF! I have always thought Nvidia generally had better drivers, but I am considering switching over to ATI because at least they can pull the audio stream through the system bus without requiring a ****ing esoteric cable.

[blackwaves_2000]

I have the same card(98+) and cable(DVI-to HDMI) but i had to use the supplied 2-pin SPDIF cable and connect it to my X-FI card and then to the port on the video card. Sound travels just fine through the cable to my HDTV. I don't think you can get sound through the card without using the 2-pin SPDIF cable, I could be wrong. Otherwise the feature works great, gave me just what I wanted. I do have SLI one card does the HDTV and the other my monitor when SLI is disabled, other than that even when I make the HDTV my primary monitor the sound still works fine through the SPDIF cable.

[J-Mag]

I have the same card(98+) and cable(DVI-to HDMI) but i had to use the supplied 2-pin SPDIF cable and connect it to my X-FI card and then to the port on the video card. Sound travels just fine through the cable to my HDTV. I don't think you can get sound through the card without using the 2-pin SPDIF cable, I could be wrong. Otherwise the feature works great, gave me just what I wanted. I do have SLI one card does the HDTV and the other my monitor when SLI is disabled, other than that even when I make the HDTV my primary monitor the sound still works fine through the SPDIF cable.

Well I guess I was wrong about the DVI assumption, but then why didn't we use DVI to carry audio back when HDMI didn't exist, or did we?

Either way it pisses me off that BFG didn't include an SPDIF cable. I see now that the type that comes with other brands is universal, so it would work with 3pin or 4pin SPDIF mobo/card headers. BFG is definitely taking a return.