I am running RH9.0 and have a 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio that is correctly detected and sound can play apart from on boot up. Upon boot up, the KDE start up sound cannot be heard and sometimes I get an error message that sampling rate 44000 could not be accessed?
Some cards do not properly support the 44000 Hz thingy. In the Control Center, under the sound options, you have the Sound System applet. Choose the Sound I/O tab and set the 'Use Custom sampling rate' to 48000... That -may- fix your problem...