Pci E?

unnameduser

Hi guys,

Just a quick one. I've to pick up a sound card for a mate in limerick today. I'm waiting for him to get back to me on it but ... I havent seen the machine and all i know is that it is new and has vista. So i'll have to make sure that there are vista drivers for the card. Can I expect that the machine is PCI-E x16?

On closer inspection on the maplin website, i cant see any PCI-E sound cards, just standard PCI.

uberpixie

unnameduser wrote: »

Hi guys,

Just a quick one. I've to pick up a sound card for a mate in limerick today. I'm waiting for him to get back to me on it but ... I havent seen the machine and all i know is that it is new and has vista. So i'll have to make sure that there are vista drivers for the card. Can I expect that the machine is PCI-E x16?

On closer inspection on the maplin website, i cant see any PCI-E sound cards, just standard PCI.

Vast majority of sound cards are still regular PCI. Think Creative might have a Xfi in pci express x1.
(not sure if it is out yet or not).

Never assume a new PC has PCI express X16, there are some awful crippled motherboards put into oem machines.

unnameduser

hmmm...

Might just wait till i get a chance to see the machine myself so. cheers

TerrorFirmer

I think most oem motherboards have the full 16x these days, it'd be unusual for it not to. I got a dirt cheap Packard Bell machine last year, Celeron D, 256mb Ram. It had a full 16x lane. Of course it's another story when some machines don't have a pci-e slot at all, but those that do, are nearly always 16x.

Anti

pci sound cards are the norm. Creative do indeed have a pci-e x1 x-fi but its as rare as rockign horse shit

astrofool

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-052-CL&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat=

It's also software based card, rather than full hardware like the other x-fi's. There's been a PCI-E Creative planned for a while now.

unnameduser

Does this mean that if the computer has pci-e rather than pci standard then ill have difficulty getting a sound card for it.

Astrofool, i presume that card is PCI E X1?

TerrorFirmer

unnameduser wrote: »

Does this mean that if the computer has pci-e rather than pci standard then ill have difficulty getting a sound card for it.

Astrofool, i presume that card is PCI E X1?

The machine will have pci slots as well, they are standard. regardless of how many or what bandwidth pci-e slots you have. That 1x card is actually quite cheap, normally pci-e cards are incredibly expensive. However, check out your friends machine first. It's very likely he does have a full 16x lane but it is far less likely he has a 1x slot (unless it's a self build, in which case he probably does).

What does he need the sound card for? Basic sound, or is he looking for a good card for multimedia and games? He'll want good speakers too, to get any benefit from a card like an x-fi. If it's just for basic sound, Pc World sell cheap 5.1 cards for about 15 euro. Their X-Fi xtreme music pci is also fairly well priced, about the same as online. Was 65 when I got mine.

unnameduser

He has a pub and wants to play the music out over the speakers. He got in some serious gear but at the moment he is using bog standard on-board speaker ports.

Anti

A xf-i will do the job. But surely a seperate amp would be best ?

Kinda like plugging in a blu-ray player into a 14" crt tv if you know what i mean.

unnameduser

Anti wrote: »

A xf-i will do the job. But surely a seperate amp would be best ?

Kinda like plugging in a blu-ray player into a 14" crt tv if you know what i mean.

Yeah there is a seperate amp but still the sound wasnt great, It kind of came and went in bursts.

I got a new soundcard earlier and fitted it and so far so good.