Sound Card?

Catsmokinpot

I am in the process of upgrading my neolithic rig, the last time I bought a sound card was about 6-7 years ago when the first audigy came out, back then there wasn't much on-board sound.

I'm looking at all the new mobo's that are out now and they all have on-board sound, and good on-board sound at that!

I'm a bit skeptical of the whole gaming sound card creative are advertising with Fatal1ty's name on it, Can someone convince me whether or not i need to get a sound card, Will it make a difference? and if so, what difference?

skuzzb

The gaming cards are just rebranded Audigy 2 cards from what I can tell. You get different software is all. Unless you have 7.1 speakers I wouldnt bother upgrading at all. If you really want to, look at the Asus Zonar card. I wouldnt bother with Creative, they dont have good driver support.

challengemaster

something about creative..

Click
Click
aaaaaand click

PogMoThoin

challengemaster wrote: »

something about creative..

Click
Click
aaaaaand click

:rolleyes: And then read this
they don't want the Audigy to run on Vista, they make the X-fi crap under vista by controlling the features in the drivers................And WHY? Because they have a new X-Fi 2 that they are working on


I'm never buying another Creative product.

Asus Zonar comes highly recommended as a replacement

Fnz

Creative probably don't want to have to pay to re-license 3rd party technologies on aging cards for use with Vista. They figure they ain't gonna be getting any more money from customers at this stage.

EDIT: I'm just after buying an Audigy card (first edition by the look of it). Hope it works alright with XP at least.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Most cheapo onboard sound chipsets I've seen were lacking in the options/tweaking department and had big, clunky, butt-ugly control panels.
I'm not sure what these fancy expensive chipsets are like, since I only buy cheap motherboards.

conzy

Go with onboard sound and see how you find it, It has improved dramatically over the years, especially on Asus boards that have the soundcard on its own daughter-board...

If you want a dedicated soundcard, the Asus Xonar (both internal and external) get great reviews..

Another option is an external AMP/DAC i just bought a Leckerton Audio UHA3 and according to reviews on Audiophile boards, they are better than any PC soundcard...

Mine should be here during the week, i'll post a little review when it arrives

alansweeney100

I'm using the onboard sound on a BFG 680i sli mobo, its fantastic, optical output into my logitech z5500s
As a previous poster mentioned, try the onboard out, if you're not impressed you can go shoppin for a sound card, sound cards seem like a fancy unnecessary extra to me..........

Fnz

I bought the Audigy assuming that it would take the audio processing strain off the CPU (for the 128 in-game voice/audio channels, or whatever). However, is it true that the Sound Blaster Audigy SE uses software decoding for much of it's... erm... 'sound producing'?

... and would that in turn mean that the CPU is, in fact, no better off than if I had of stuck with the on-board sound?

PogMoThoin

alansweeney100 wrote: »

I'm using the onboard sound on a BFG 680i sli mobo, its fantastic, optical output into my logitech z5500s
As a previous poster mentioned, try the onboard out, if you're not impressed you can go shoppin for a sound card, sound cards seem like a fancy unnecessary extra to me..........

Onboard is fine for music, but do you not find it lacking in games? No way I'm going back to onboard, its the reason i bought an X-fi. Games just dont have the same effect with onboard.

L31mr0d

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Onboard is fine for music, but do you not find it lacking in games? No way I'm going back to onboard, its the reason i bought an X-fi. Games just dont have the same effect with onboard.

+1

I find it horrible going back to onboard after getting so used to my XFI. Although saying that their drivers really are crap, I usually have to tweak at least one or 2 audio settings before playing any game as there is usually some popping or sound skipping in game. But the sounds are a lot deeper (i.e. gunshots actually sound real rather than like stones being thrown against a tin roof) and I'd be lost without my CMSS 3D for my Sennheiser HD555 cans in FPS's.

DonkeyStyle \o/

One thing I like about having a good soundcard is that you keep it across as many upgrades as you want*... for example I've probably been through three different motherboards (due to upgrades) in the time I've had this same X-Fi... so I've never had to worry about my next motherboard having crappy or difficult onboard sound.

* except for an upgrade to Vista apparently