What sound card?

[rob4001]

After spending most of my cash on some creative gigaworks g500 5.1 speakers, I am still using my motherboard for sound so i think i should get a sound card.

My problem is my budget is tight. I use my pc for music, games tv & dvd's. I was thinking of getting an audigy 4 as they are quite cheap now, should I get an x-fi extreme gamer? Are there other sound cards I should consider.

Thanks

[kungpo]

Are you not happy with the onboard sound? Why do you think you need a sound card?

[rob4001]

Its not that I'm not happy with it just that now I've got some decent speakers I was under the impression sound cards offer improved quality. I may be wrong I dont know if there is a difference now with the motherboard I have (abit quad gt).

[kungpo]

Well...I guess your ears are the best judge of that. I use the onboard sound on all of my machines and it is good enough for me, although I'm not a big gamer.

[Hasnath]

grab an xfi-xtreme music oem off ebay, its the best option avoid the audio and the cut down gamer versions

[Thorsson]

XFi unless you have Vista.

[sp3n]

depends on exactly what you want from a sound card. such as EAX for games, or Dolby Digital / DTS for movies, or digital inputs/outputs.

if your onboard sound is good enough for you, then i would probably stick with that. however you can get much higher quality sound from a dedicated sound card providing that you have some decent speakers.

i wouldn't recommend creative though.. the cracking/popping i have had with previous creative cards really grinds my gears, and the lack of vista support sucks.

[SHare]

Lol, careful with the X-fi Music from ebuyer, I got mine in a jiffy bag through the post. Currently waiting on a replacement which I suspect has been posted in a similar maner.

[Thorsson]

It's amazing. The OP says

I use my pc for music, games tv & dvd's

and yet people give answers that say they didn't bother reading the post, just the title.

Anyway cracking/popping is an old creative problem with certain mobo chipsets - my investigations showed it was a DMA problem. The main X-Fi problem is different and is to do with delays on the PCI-bus (it's a dropping of sound, like you might get on a digital TV if the signal is poor). It relates to NF4 chipsets (but not the 590).

The other problem that Creative have caused is that their cards haven't shared resources very well. This can be usually be sorted by moving the card to a different slot. I haven't seen this problem with the X-Fi, or with Audigy 2 for that matter, but it may still happen with certain hardware combos.

However I haven't seen any of these problems at first hand for some time in any of the many computers I've built for myself, friends and relations.

So I still recommend the X-Fi to anyone playing games, because most games support (the latest) EAX, and X-Fi does this in hardware.

[Martin87]

Had no problems with my X-Fi music it was a vast improvement to the onboard sound, not tried it in vista yet but i no support is supposed not very good! But it works great in XP