Onboard Digital SP/DIF audio

OK. My Asus P4PE is officially going in the trash complete with its dog****
SoundMAX audio.
I have tried every damn thing to fix an intermittent clicking and popping
sound with winamp - out of both the analog and digital outputs.
PCI Latency 32 / 64. Delay Transaction on / off - different bus clock
speeds because of AGP / PCI locking bug, in earlier firmwares. Also tried
every firmware up to and including latest 1006.
I have managed to fix this problem before, but on latest BIOS / OS upgrade
its back again.

Also seemed to be specific to playing back compressed audio formats (mp3,
ape) but its there on wav files this time. I want to find a P4 Intel
chipset board that just plain works, straight out of the box - no f*(&king
about. And all I want to do more or less is code and playback clean mp3s.

Oh - also the onboard firewire on this crapheap works like 10% of the time,
otherwise it fails to start. Its VIA chipset Have tried as I say every bios,
new cmos battery - nothing helps. Gave up and used PCI card instead - also a
VIA - not the greatest but it starts every time.

I now have my eye on Intel D865PERL (hell, they design the chipset, and the
cpus, they must be able to get the boards right !!)

Can anyone recommend for or against this board, esp. with regard to onboard
sound and firewire performance? I'd be really grateful for any input.

regards

Clunes

I have tried every damn thing to fix an intermittent clicking and popping
sound with winamp - out of both the analog and digital outputs.

Also seemed to be specific to playing back compressed audio formats (mp3,
ape) but its there on wav files this time. I want to find a P4 Intel
chipset board that just plain works, straight out of the box - no f*(&king
about. And all I want to do more or less is code and playback clean mp3s.

That's a hardware issue? I always thought that was windows - its never
happened to me on the same hardware whilst using my dual-boot linux
operating system.