guypea

does this shed light? http://www.mediacollege.com/hardware/connectivity/hdmi/pc-audio.html seems an hdmi cable would make it sound better?

separate speakers yes (and an amp) the speakers only have a normal 'plug-in' connector tho

apparently you can buy hdmi cable to DVI plug, but I duno what benefits there would be? http://www.club-3d.com/index.php/products/reader.en/product/hdmi-to-dvi-i-single-link-cable.html

first of all, thanks very much for your help on this :) i have three ports in the graphics card. i was using the smaller blue plug. i have now swapped to the longer white plug (via an adaptor) there is also an hdmi socket, which i dont have a connector for since ive used the longer white socket, it seems a lot better. though i had to right click on speaker icon (bottom right), playback devices, right click on 'speakers', 'properties', make levels 100, 'balance'... adjust to 100 if it stays like that its fine, but i noticed after i had done that yesterday that the levels changed down on their own after launching a music file. thought that was a bit odd restarted this morning and they were all at 100 though is there any way of making sure the levels dont go down again? and why would they in the first place?

anyone have any ideas?

actually my old graphics card was nvidia gforce, not AMD its connected with a normal connector (through an adaptor). i havent changed it speakers (and amp) used to sound fantastic. now i have to have it on full to just to sound adequate

green speaker jack in green socket showing in device manager is... AMD High definintion audio device (my last graphics card was AMD i think) and... High Definition Audio Device both are enabled i duno if that means my asus radeon HD 5450 is wokring or not

now disabled onboard sound and there's no sound at all. that presumably means the graphics card isnt working? or installed correctly? how can i double check?

the radeon 5450 card is in there now. i have gone to BIOS to make sure on board sound is enabled no change

no i took the old graphics card out not sure how to make sure the on board graphics is turned back on in the BIOS?? not doubting you, but why would i need to do that cus there is a new card installed

i recently for a radeon hd 5450 replacement graphics card to replace my old knackered one. but ive noticed the sound on my dell inspiron desktop is now nowhere near what it was, low volume etc even though i have a dell amp and it was great before all connections checkd could the problem be related to my graphics card? if not, where else to check? ive been to the obvious places and all seems fine

now getting messages about problems with the driver for my graphics card ive been to the nvidia website which says i have the latest driver installed the windows update has an optional update for the card, but the update keeps failing... it says windows update error 80070103... which turns out to be a message you might get when the update has already been installed. confusing. things like candy crush on facebook just freeze, and the message comes up: there was a problem with the graphics card, it shut down and has successfully recovered. weird can anyone shed some light?

so you mean physically take the card out and clean it?

graphics card problem kind of fits with the problems ive had actually but if is graphics card, how do i 'clean' it? Operating System Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2 CPU Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.40GHz 31 °C Kentsfield 65nm Technology RAM 2.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 332MHz (5-5-5-15) Motherboard Dell Inc. 0TP406 (CPU) Graphics Dell E193FP (1280x1024@60Hz) 256MB GeForce 8600 GTS (nVidia) 51 °C Hard Drives 596GB ARRAY (RAID) Optical Drives PBDS DVD+-RW DH-16W1S Audio High Definition Audio Device

RAM Memory slots Total memory slots 4 Used memory slots 2 Free memory slots 2 Memory Type DDR2 Size 2048 MBytes Channels # Dual DRAM Frequency 332.5 MHz CAS# Latency (CL) 5 clocks RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD) 5 clocks RAS# Precharge (tRP) 5 clocks Cycle Time (tRAS) 15 clocks Command Rate (CR) 2T Physical Memory Memory Usage 49 % Total Physical 2.00 GB Available Physical 1.00 GB Total Virtual 4.23 GB Available Virtual 2.93 GB SPD Number Of SPD Modules 2 Slot #1 Slot #2