Hi again all
Once again, thank you Andy for helping - (my local clients thank you too ... even on Saturdays, their calls can come in little storms!).....
Calcifer - sorry that this latest build is quickly falling into many of the same traps that dragged down the last one. The corruption that sfc /scannow found but could not fix is once again the issue where the Nvidia drivers over-write the opencl.dll file, corrupting it. Here is a link to a thread on our Windows Update forum that talks about that issue, and that has a fix-it app called SFCfix that can sometimes help.
https://www.sysnative.com/forums/wi...10-update-1511-th2-post140472.html#post140472
If the SFCfix method helps with the file corruption and misbehaving Nvidia driver, that would be wonderful
If not:
I noticed that you have the Nvidia 358.91 drivers installed - did you install those yourself, or did they appear automatically (installed by Windows 10 as part of its automatic setup)?.
If you installed the Nvidia drivers, remove them, and see if things improve with whatever generic drivers Windows 10 provides. If you didn't install the 358.91 drivers, I'm not exactly sure which way to go, because the word on several tech help sites is that the Nvidia 364 series drivers, even the brand-new 364.72 drivers that are only a few days old, are causing trouble on more computers than is normally acceptable. [Gaming drivers are always going to have some imperfections, since they "push the envelope" on often brand-new technologies ... but the recent widespread troubles with the Nvidia drivers has shocked me just a bit].
If the SFCfix tool and uninstalling the 358.91 drivers doesn't help (or if Windows 10 installed the 358.91 drivers) - and the trouble mostly shows up as the stuttering problem, try disabling the Nvidia HD Audio in Device Manager, if you aren't using an HDMI connection while gaming. Test for results.
Then:
Also install the ASUS provided audio drivers for the Xonar. I didn't check to see if those drivers include a driver for HDMI connected audio or not -- but you can test things with the Nvidia HD Audio drivers disabled in Device Manager, while the Xonar drivers are active ..... and then test things when the Nvidia driver and the Xonar driver are both active ..... and then test things with the Nvidia HD driver active, and everything in the Xonar package except HDMI drivers active (if that is possible).
And just to be thorough, see if drivers are installed for the onboard sound that you disabled in the UEFI. If you aren't booting the system using UEFI, but are using the Legacy Bios setting, you might have to disable the onboard sound in a setting in that section of the Setup screens as well. You can also check in Device Manager to see if the onboard sound shows up, and if it is disabled there or not. Usually, if the device is completely disabled in the Bios, it will not show up in Device Manager. If for whatever crazy reason the darned onboard shows up in Device Manager as Enabled, try disabling it.
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Regarding the Xonar drivers, if things aren't wonderful with the Asus drivers, it is certainly a reasonable idea to try the beta low-DPC drivers. I just imagine that we will have to keep our expectations modest. (It would be nice to be pleasantly surprised, though).
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Visit the Event Viewer "Summary of Administrative Events" window off and on during testing, and check in the Errors category lists that there aren't any disk errors showing there. Since we weren't able to run a definitive diagnostic on your SSD, we can't know if the drive is completely healthy or not.
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Regarding MBR & GPT partitioning. If you have hardware new enough to support GPT partitioning, it has some nice benefits. It's a newer standard - and has some nice extras: such as support for more than 4 partitions on a drive, support for drives larger than 2 TB. and the security benefits of residing in a UEFI system that can enable the Secure Boot features. MBR still works, even on systems with UEFI - if they are set to Legacy mode. MBR is often the only choice for the system drive on older systems, because UEFI isn't an option (simply because the motherboard doesn't have the feature).
The performance variance isn't all that noticeable on most systems yet, but it is likely to increase over time (likely better performance and compatibility with GPT) as more and more hardware is designed with its features in mind.
I don't know if the audio stuttering issue will be affected by your choice of GPT or MBR.... Most of my customers who have upgraded their older PCs from Windows 7 to Windows 10 still use MBR for their drives, and - since most of them use on-board sound ... no sound issues have cropped up (or any other type of issue, actually .... I've been surprised at how many were trouble-free)
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I'll keep checking back when I can - let's hope for some good luck soon.
P.S. ..... Hmm... and if things just keep getting worse, what the heck, roll the dice, and see if you are one of the lucky Nvidia owners whose systems work OK with the latest Nvidia 364 versions.
