Sound Card Advice

mmurch01 · May 2007

I play cs:source. A lot.

I installed vista and it went to hell. Went from average of 150fps in game to 30fps if I'm lucky. After spending a week reading about vista and the driver hell that it has put people into, I happened across the solution: If I use -nosound when launching the game, I get great framerates again. Apparently, Vista does not use directsound, but the source engine does.

I'm currently using a SB Audigy2 and I am curious if I buy a $99 XFI gaming SB card if that will do the trick. I read something about how the XFI cards are the only SB cards that can convert the directsound to openal (or something like that) and that it will translate into improved fps. I don't need a big jump to get where I want to be...50fps is fine as long as I never get close to 30fps in game. The box for XFI cards does not mention Vista, which sort of scares me from spending the money...is it worth it?

Thanks!

ElectricTurtle · May 2007

Yeah, lollerskates, Vista has no DirectSound3D support. Creative has a workaround for the X-Fi series called Alchemy, but it's important to stress that this is a WORKAROUND not a natively compatible Vista driver. Alchemy just intercepts DS3D commands and dumps them to OpenAL, which is a 3rd party HD audio interpreter.

mmurch01 · May 2007

I think I am bound to have to do this...what a pain! Vista! Scorge!!!

gneGne · May 2007

Try switching up the sound settings, so you do have sound but not the sound that is unsupported by Vista. Framerates shouldn't be that bad.

mmurch01 · June 2007

If you would give me a step by step on that and it works I would give you a cookie!

mmurch01 · June 2007

So, yeah. I got an X-FI extremegamer sound card. Installed the drivers, did the alchemy thing and my framerates are not improving too much...can't stay consistently above 30fps. Should I return it or do you think it is a matter of 'fuck with it until it works'?

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