Which sound card out of these would you recommend for a hardcore gamer?

Sylver123

Sylver123

Sylver123

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Hello!

I was wondering which sound card out of these listed below would you recommend for a hardcore gamer, and also sounds great when playing music and watching DVD, HD, Blu-Ray films on the computer? The card also has to be fully 7.1 compatible, and work fully with my Creative GigaWorks 7.1 S750 THX Speakers.

1. Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 Sound Card

2. Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium - Fatal1ty Champion Series 7.1 Sound Card

3. Any other Recommendations???


Thank you for responding;)
 
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I believe people around here are quite keen on the Asus Xonar. No personal experience with it though, but reviews seem to be good.
 
I've had an xonar D2 and it's a very good sound card, but i found the sound quality to be not as good as an X-Fi.

I personally have never had problems with creative cards like most people have, but if you play games more than listen to music and watch movies then get an X-fi.

If you're coming from onboard audio then you should see a big improvement going to an xonar D1.
 
What`s the ASUS Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe Sound Card like for gaming? does it have the latest hardware EAX for games, same as the X-Fi`s cards have and would it work with my speakers above, and give me full 7.1 channel sound?
 
Unless you have a specific use for a breakout box I'd go for the higher quality Asus cards. Not sure if you do though since you've only mentioned speakers, not headphones..
 
I take it if my main priority is gaming, I should just get a X-Fi card, as that`s what they've been built for? if so, then witch X-Fi out of the above in my first post is the best one to get?
 
No issues with any old games even if DIRECT 3D, that's what Alchemy is for.

The OP stated its for gaming so i have to agree with the peeps above, get the X-FI (it ain't the best for Audio though).
 
Sylver123 said:
Personally, i've only ever used creative cards for sound, so which high end X-Fi is the best?
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Well the X-Fi Elite Pro is a good sound card, but you can still get the X-FI Fatal1ty version of it in places which is the same sound card, but different bundle and cheaper. Depends on what you need.

The newer X-Fi Titanium is good, but depends if you have a spare PCI-express slot handy.
 
I take it there`s not much difference between X-Fi Elite Pro, price £211.59 and X-Fi Titanium - Fatal1ty Champion Series, price £132.24, apart from Elite Pro is PCI only, and Titanium Fatal1ty is PCI-express, and the only reason why the Elite Pro is more expensive is because of all the extra stuff you get with it?
 
helmutcheese said:
No issues with any old games even if DIRECT 3D, that's what Alchemy is for.

The OP stated its for gaming so i have to agree with the peeps above, get the X-FI (it ain't the best for Audio though).
Click to expand...

i've used alchemy, but it's pap with some titles, like max payne

alchemy is a rubbish way to tackle the problem, if it could scan your steam / game dir's for you it'd be one thing..
 
I've used an X-Fi XtremeMusic and a Xonar D2 and neither really works perfectly.

The big X-fi drawback was that I couldn't get it working with 4GB in Vista. A minor niggle was having to set up profiles for Steam Games manually.

The Xonar works fine in Vista with 4GB but compatibility with older games and EAX is bordering on dire. Newer games occasionally have problems too, which Asus occasionally fix in their all-too-infrequent driver updates. For titles like Rome:total war the Xonar is pretty much a downgrade from my old Audigy 2 because of the problems.

I would advise trying an X-Fi. If it works, keep it (whether it works seems to be a bit of a lottery). If not then get a Xonar as a fallback option.

If everything worked as it should, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Xonar over the X-Fi but for many gamers it will just be too niggly - especially if older games with EAX are involved.
 
i recieved my xonar dx (pcie) version yesterday from OCuK.Its a huge improvement over my previous 2 soundcards .

Unfortunately my previous 2 soundcards have been producing some weird stuttering sounds in xp for a few months due to running old drivers i guess.So i had to go to the onboard sound.Which p[roduced a clean sound but wasnt as good as the dedicated ones.

This xonar is amazing compared to integrated soundcard .An absolutely huge improvement when playing music cds .A big improvement in games.I will probably get used to the improvement over time.But at the moment its amazing improvement
 
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