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[Tech on?] Sound card advice
Violynt
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I need a sound card that outputs Dolby Digital 5.1. I had a HTOmega Striker that worked great but I sold it (long story and I wished I hadn't). They no longer sell them on newegg and zipzoomfly doesn't carry many sound cards.
So I need a recommendation on a sound card and it needs to output DD 5.1 threw either coaxial or optical.
So I need a recommendation on a sound card and it needs to output DD 5.1 threw either coaxial or optical.
Violynt on
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156001
Wow, that card looks pretty awesome. I might have to look into one of those myself as it would suit my current setup quite nicely!
PSN ID : Xander51 Steam ID : Xander51
The new intel chipset has DD 5.1 and the old Nforce 2 chipset had it as well.
Also on SPDIF.
I'm using this card to connect my PC to my home theater sound system so I can play back movies and tv shows in 5.1 and maybe one day 7.1. Games should sound good as well. :P
I think my motherboard is an Intel P35. The audio sounds great (no idea what the reviewers are complaining about), I just have been wondering if it can sound even better, because for some reason I have a TOSLINK cable in my room and haven't had anything to plug it into until now.
There are headsets you can plug into TOSLINK as well.
Of course none of this matters if that motherboard doesn't support DD 5.1, I did a little research and I think it does but I'm not 100% sure.
That motherboard, as well as pretty much all motherboards in existence that use onboard sound uses AC'97. Essentially all the sound processing etc is done by your processor, all that the onboard sound chip really does is convert the processed audio into an analog signal.
One of the reasons I went to a discrete sound card is because of an annoying sound bug in Oblivion that Realtek still haven't fixed in their latest drivers. (I know this because my laptop, a Macbook Pro uses a Realtek chip for its sound)
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
I got a base model Sound Blaster and got a 20FPS increase, no joke.
NForce 2 onboard sound is actually faster than any separate sound card you can have.
Also, on dual core systems it should make no difference at all.
Err, point of order, I thought all motherboards use intel HD Audio now.
Well I have a core2 duo with an asus board. Trust me, I didn't think it would be a problem and came upon this by accident.
shitty shit mcshitty o'shitterson shit-chan.
seriously. Play a game on AC'97, then play it on an X-Fi and then go back to the on-board shit, I mean, sound.
You'll wann rip your ears off. Oh, and even regular mp3 playing is quite shitty too.
AC'97 may sound good compared to crappy ipod earphones, but it's shit.
20 FPS increase huh.
For what you need, weretaco's solution looks slick regardless.
All the benchmarks show about a MAX 7 fps difference between the Creative cards and on board/non hardware accelerated sound cards. Also you don't get that increase from the Creative card in Vista and one more thing, the sound card I am buying here isn't prone to causing blue screen of deaths.
Stop speaking out of your ass Meiz.
EDIT: Benchmark. I'm not buying this card for a speed increase, I want to be able to use my surround sound threw optical and I can't do that with the any of the Creative cards. Well you can but it's not as convenient.
That's right, I'm talking out of my ass yet when I loaded DoD after I installed my Sound blaster, I went from a jittery 40-50fps to 70-80 fps without tweaks or anything. Just disabled my onboard card and set the sound blaster as primary. I know this because netgraph is consistently on in every source game I play.
Look, I know because I have practical experience in this matter so before you dismiss the idea, try not doing the very thing you're accusing me of.
What kind of kooky math professor taught you percentages and their application I wonder?
My pc wasn't fucked up hose brain, it was just build. All I did was:
-Dissable my onboard card
-Enable my Sound Blaster.
That's it.
I didn't re-install Direct X
I didn't kick it
I didn't hurt its feelings.
Why, which one did you learn from?
I'm getting a 3 fps increase in GTA:SA using the creative card. That's the only game I got an FPS increase.
Half-life 2 stayed consistent (by consistent I mean no change) and so did Call of Duty 4.
Specs: Core2Duo 6550, 8800GT, 2 gigs of DDR2 800 and an Asus P5K-E motherboard.
Maybe I should turn off all AA and AF and then lower my resolution so I'm not bound by my graphics card? But then what's the point?
Right and would this be more likely because of:
A)Magic
B)Recent and only hardware change.
See, that's fucking weird because I have practically the same setup except my video card is ATI.
Look I'm willing to post SS's of in game footage for tf2 and Dod once I get home.
I'd like to test battlefield 2 but I'm not sure of the console command to uncap the fps.
All manufactured ones now, yes. But most of current machines people actually own still have AC'97 chips in them, case in point whenever somebody at work brings in their home laptop/pc in it's usually an AC'97 chip in that sucker.
It'll probably be a year or two before we see the "hd" audio chips take the majority. (I hate that hd audio marketing term)
Also, if you have a single core processor then yes.. with a discrete audio card you'll see a bit of a performance increase, probably somewhere in the region of 1-5%. If you've got multi/dual/quad core processor then you likely won't see any difference. (since most games aren't multithreaded and the fact that in terms on processing power the audio processing stuff takes a tiny, tiny amount of processing time out of those more modern processors)
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
I thought all Creative cards processed the sound though...
My mobo's an Asus P5LD2 with a Core 2 Duo 6300 and 3 gigs of ram.
I'll try both for tf2.
Edit: 6fps difference.
I guess DoD's just bad with audio. Mind you, there's a lot more ambiance.
Moral of the story is don't play DoD with onboard Audio.
This is about not sounding like shit in a tiny can.
As for actual cards to buy, this may not help out the OP but there's a new audio standard coming with Dx10.1 (XAudio 2?) so I'm waiting for that to hit before I end up with a soundcard in my machine.
Going to look into this later.
Also, I hear WoW is a bit odd when it comes to sound.
Is it an Audigy 2 Value?
The Audigy Value cards are cheaper, because they use an inexpensive chipset. Unfortunately, this means that they have to do much of their processing in the driver, rather than in hardware. The result is a performance hit on CPU-dependent games.
I was really unimpressed by my Audigy 2 Value, so I rarely used it. My X-Fi is a different story. I've noticed a bit of a performance gain from my X-Fi card, and EAX is certainly an improvement on games that use it well.