Which of the 2 sound cards for games & midi audio files

[retroborg]

Which of the following two sound cards would you choose for the ultimate modern gaming experience and that also supports old-school midi audio files with good quality playback?

CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER X-FI TITANIUM FATAL1TY PRO
http://www.e-shop.gr/show_per.phtml?id=PER.540194

ASUS XONAR D2X/XDT/A
http://www.e-shop.gr/show_per.phtml?id=PER.522601

Thanks in advance

[Powderhound]

The Xonar is probably your best bet if you're using Vista as the Creative Vista drivers are an absolute shambles.

[retroborg]

I'm usning WinXP Pro by the way...

By the way, I noticed that they come in two slot versions... PCI & PCI Express x1. Is there any difference in performance?
Which one should I choose?

Thanks in advance

[Olmy]

I don't really recommend getting a Xonar card right now. I don't know much about the Creative drivers apart from what I've read recently on tech sites, but the Asus Xonar drivers are absolutely terrible right now too. If you want to game, I recommend using onboard sound. It might not have the clarity and quality of my Xonar DX but at least it works. Most of my games have one issue or another with the Xonar DX so I definitely cannot recommend it for gaming. Here is a current list of games discovered to not work properly with the Xonar DX List of games with sound problems (DS3D GX 2.0). I don't know if the other Xonar models are similarly affected but it might be worth looking in to.

[retroborg]

What about the two bus types that they come in?
What should I get... PCI-E or PCI?

and most importantly... does Asus & Creative support old-school midi audio files with good quality playback?

[Thorsson]

What do you use Midi for? I reckon that you need to find some specialist muso site if you want to know specifically about midi. Probably neither of these cards is best.

For games & XP I would go with the XFi. Supports EAX in hardware.

I doubt whether there's any noticeable difference between PCI & PCI-E. I'd probably go for the latter if there wasn't much difference in price (faster interface although I doubt that PCI is saturated).

[retroborg]

My M/B features both ports PCI & PCI-E...
So which of the 2 interfaces should I choose?
Will I benefit anything from the faster PCI-E interface and will the audio sound better or have less lag?

Basically I want to be able to play all my old General Midi Audio files as they sounded on my old ISA Sound Blaster 64 and be able to play all the old DOS games that feature General Midi soundtracks via DOSBox Emu...

So, I want to choose the best card for the job…
Seeing as my M/B has no ISA slot, what should I get?

Thanks in advance.

[acrobat]

These figures may not be completely accurate but it's what I've read in the past, but from what I can gather, the difference between the X-FI cards and none X-Fi cards, is just a few frames per second at the most. It has some kind of processing chip on it so it processes the sound itself which means the CPU doesn't have to do it, so with gaming it can give you like 1 or 2 extra frames per second. But with most games, it's the graphics card that is doing most of the work anyway, so it's not especially helpful in reality. And then I think it's kind of the same with PCI and PCI-E. The PCI-E port is faster, but it's not like there is a whole lot of strain on a sound card anyway, so it may give you 1 or 2 frames per second or something (in some cases), but really it shouldn't make much difference.

Personally, for me, the decision to use PCI or PCI-E would be based on what else I am likely to use them for, because most motherboards have at least 2 PCI ports, but only 1 PCI-E port. So personally, I think I would just put a sound card in a PCI port because they are perfectly happy in that, and then save the PCI-E port for something like a TV Card which from what I've read, can benefit more from being in a PCI-E port, and also it seems that a lot of the newer ones are only using that port so you would end up with an old one if you had already used up your PCI-E port.

As for the sound card, I know nothing about the second card, but I know that I have a CREATIVE SOUND BLASTER X-FI and that you can't go wrong with it. I play LOTS of old games using DOSBOX and things like that, and it works like a treat. I have no problems at all. (Hint hint, I recommend getting that one).

The only way SoundBlaster cards are not a good choice (as far as I can tell) is if you are only web browsing/movie watching/etc and in which case you don't even need a soundcard at all because the sound chips on a motherboard do fine, Or you are doing things like recording a guitar etc. Because there are other cards that are better for musicians basically. But seeing as you just want to game, you should get the X-Fi in my opinion.

[GoNz0]

tbh the x-fi are the same, its down to what slot you want to put it in,

[razor92]

If you mobo has 2 or more PCI-E x1 then I would definalty use the PCI-E x1 port as it provides a higher bandwidth than the PCI port. Also there are few cards that use PCI-E x1 ports at the moment, so by using a PCI-E x1 port would save you a PCI port for something else.

However if you only have one then i would do as acrobat says and save the port for a TV tuner (unless you already have one, or dont intend to get one).

[DDY]

For your average sound card which includes the X-Fi and Xonar series, the extra bandwidth a PCI-E x1 slot has over a PCI slot doesn't make a difference at all, although the two buses are different you should only be choosing between the two on a physical basis, e.g if the PCI-E x1 slots don't obstruct the cooling of a graphics card where a PCI does or vice versa. Another issue is future proofing, I can see PCI going the way of the ISA slot but it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.

Both sound cards, the X-Fi and the Xonar are able to play MIDI, all sound cards made since 10 years ago could (under XP and Vista that is). The difference with the X-Fi however, it uses a the Creative SoundBlaster sound bank where other cards e.g. Xonar use the windows default MIDI sound bank (and synth), some say the windows MIDI sound bank sounds like a toy keyboard, others say it's better than the SB one, between the two I'd choose the SB.

Another thing I should mention is the ability to load your own sound banks via sound fonts easily with the X-Fi (under XP it's easy, not so in Vista - read on). If you like your MIDIs it's certainly worth a play.

The problem with the X-Fi's MIDI and Vista are the hoops you must jump trough to change the MIDI device output, the default MIDI out is set to the default windows MIDI synth, there are 3rd party apps around to help you to do this but I haven't tried any of them.

For gaming purposes, I'd advise you to avoid the Xonar cards due to the driver issues they face, it seems like Asus are no better at dealing with bugs than Creative are, at least Creative in this case have managed to iron out enough bugs under Vista for most if not all recent games.

Go for the X-Fi...

[Powderhound]

Actually, I just noticed that you're going for the Fata1ty Titanium, which is to put it frankly, pointless. Its only 'advantages' over the standard titanium are that it has 64MB of X-ram (Of limited use, even in the half dozen games that use it) as opposed to 16MB and it has a metal EM shield (Which may have some effect, but not a huge amount). Save yourself £20 and go for the standard.

[Thorsson]

Well, that just goes to prove the dictum that anything with the name Fatal1ty on it is a rip off.

[Blackmage]

Managed to Get a XFi-Music the other day £25(Second), the best upgrade i've brought in a while. Makes my music have more kick to it.

[floppybootstomp]

I was wondering about that Asus Xonar, from what I'm reading here it doesn't look encouraging.

I too wonder if there's any advantage for a sound card to use the pci-e slot rather than a pci slot.

I'm using a Creative X-Fi Audio card with Vista and it does actually sound very good indeed, much better than the Asus Board's onboard sound. And the 'X-Fi' Audio card isn't actually a true X-Fi, the chip used is closer to a tarted up Sound Blaster.

However, Creative wouldn't bring out drivers for their older cards within Vista initially, it took some guy (named Daniel, that's all I know) to write drivers to make my card and the older Soundblasters work within Vista.

This showed that the drivers were easily written and that Creative were obviously hoping for extra sales by not issuing Vista drivers. After something of a stand-off I believe Creative have guardedly given support to these unoffficial drivers after first banning this Daniel character from their Forum and removing all links to his drivers.

This soured my relationship with Creative to be quite honest and the only advantage I can think of by using a Creative card is EAX, which tbh is no big shakes.

I would have liked to have recommended the Asus card but I just don't know.

The comments made about the extra memory not being worth the money are true, it won't be used and the few games that take advantage of it, I doubt if you'll notice the difference.

I don't know about the midi issue but no, your board won't have an ISA slot as it was manufactured after 1999

[2Cold Scorpio]

For XP Pro, I'd say say a lot of dollars and get a Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer. The Fatality brand is quite overpriced for little gain (I do admit, I'd like to have that external I/O hub, but it isn't worth the dollars). I love my XtremeGamer card for gaming and music.

If you're looking for a good card for Vista, I don't know what to recommend; I have no problem with music with my XtremeGamer on it, but I haven't played any games on Vista, so I can't tell you how well it works. ^_^