Cheap gaming sound card?

Sumanji

Sumanji

Sumanji

Soldato
Joined
12 Mar 2003
Posts
8,351
Location
USA
Hey,

Looking for a good sound card for my LAN PC, as the onboard Realtek ALC888 screws up stereo in Source games (long-standing problem that neither side will admit fault for!).

Preferably a PCI-E 1x card, but can be PCI also. Will be used in Windows XP x64 with a Creative Fatality gaming headset. I was looking at the X-Fi Xtreme Audio for around £30, but is the Titanium discernibly better? Main thing I'm concerned about is EAX and accurate stereo reproduction.

Cheers,

Suman
 
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Stay off the XtremeAudio. It's basically a rebadged Audigy series card and won't do EAX5. As a minimum for X-Fi you want an XtremeGamer or XtremeMusic (preferably the latter). If you use Vista you will need to follow Creative's guidelines on getting Steam games working properly.

I would also put in a cautionary recommendation for the Xonar series cards. Higher EAX levels are emulated and works most of the time. The emulation isn't perfect though and users are finding out that there are problems in a number of games. With latest (non-beta) drivers it's fine for HL2.

I swapped from an XtremeMusic to Xonar D2 because of problems with compatibility in Vista. The sound is marginally better and it solved my compatibility problems but the X-Fi was more convenient (it 'remembered' correct settings for games once you'd set them) and it was fully supported in more games.
 
Cool, thanks Uriel.

I would prefer a small PCI-E card with low-fuss setup, so do you think the X-Fi Titanium (non-Fatal1ty) would be a good choice?

But then do I actually need all the features of the full blown X-Fi, or would the Xtreme Audio suffice for simple use?

Cheers,

Suman
 
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The main difference in games will be in EAX5 titles. There are a few, Battlefield 2 & 2142, Bioshock etc. It just means a few environmental effects really. They could be handy in multiplayer. Environmental occlusion is an example (muffling sound on the other side of a wall but still allowing you to hear it). EAX4 and lower still works.

There's a sound quality increase and some additional features too.

The Xonar DX would also fit your bill but driver support for higher levels of EAX isn't quite there for all games. Asus are working on improvements though.

Edit: There's a review here: http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound-blaster-xfi-xtreme-audio-pcie/ . Not read it for a while but I think it summarised what you'd be missing.
 
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Ok cool... this is only for my LAN box so I wanna avoid spending more on the sound card than on the CPU, hehe. Just need sodding stereo to work properly in Source games. At the moment I get the same output over both ears (but works fine in other games).
 
The PCI-E Extreme Audio is a totally different beast to the PCI version, it does support EAX and tbh i couldnt tell any difference in quality in games or music when comparing an extreme misic PCI and the extreme audio PCI-E. The PCI-E extreme audio dosent support EAX 5 but tbh in Vista thats not a big issue anyway i think as vista dosent support EAX unless you use alchemy which you can still use with the PCI-E card

See my review here :

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17759521&highlight=startername_meatloaf
 
get the xonar ive had 3 of the xfi cards and non of them are anywhere near as good as my xonar
 
MeatLoaf said:
What is it then?
Click to expand...

It's a rebadged Audigy 2 / 4 on PCI-E. It's not a bad card - much better than most onboard options and it supports EAX4. It should have never been called an X-Fi in the first place though, and it's why some of us are practically offended by its existance - PCI or PCI-E.

Edit: The PCI version also supports EAX4 and the feature set is exactly the same. It's bigger and has more ports but that's no more relevant than the Xonar D1 and D2 looking so different. Why are you so convinced that the PCI-E version of the XtremeAudio is so superior?
 
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