Need a sound card

RoniisH · 2 Nov 2006 at 19:47

I'm getting really sick of this, because I can't run Flight Simulator X with sound on. (FPS drops from full (27, locked at 27) down to about 12, in any aircraft) So my way out of this is getting a new sound card. (most likely for christmas). Can you recommend me any good ones? I've got two in mind at the moment, and those are Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeGamer and Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi XtremeMusic.

Oh, and I just gotta be sure that these are compatible with my Dimension 9100.

Thanks.

RoniisH · 3 Nov 2006 at 20:31

fraseredwards said:
have you got a nf4 board ?

if so you may want to look at the forums at the creative site for all the issues with nf4 boards

http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board?board.id=soundblaster

not that I know of. As far as I know, NF4 boards aren't dell boards.

RoniisH · 4 Nov 2006 at 15:09

manic_man said:
Seeing as its a Dell then no it wont have an AMD based chipset such as the nforce 4.

I find it very odd that even with a poor onboard sound solution that you can loose over 10FPS! I know soem sound solutions knock a few FPS off here and there but not that much.

Being honest if your only getting 27FPS i think you need to look further afield than your sound problems and look towards your graphics card. I dont know what the exact specs of your PC are but Dell nearly always use a terrible graphics card. Also if you have less than 1GB of ram then I would head towards that as well.

Im not saying that a new soundcard wouldnt improve things, something like a Creative X-Fi most definitely would, not only in quality but in the amount of CPU time it takes up. Your likely to still take a hit though, probably half of what you currently are but that would still mean you'd be getting sub 20FPS and given you will have spent ~£60 on the sound card i get the feeling you would still be dissapointed.

A decent system with a good graphics card and 1GB+ of ram should easily handle that game regardless of the sound solution being used.

I presumed you didn't know that this is a next gen game.

My specs are fine. 3.2GHz P4, 7800GTX, 2GB RAM, perfect. but as I said, this is a NEXT GENERATION PC GAME that is suppose to last for the upcoming 3 years. so 27 FPS is fantastic, with sound off, but as I said, with sound on, It drops below pleasurable. I'm not asking for opinion, I'm asking which one of these two cards I oughta by.

RoniisH · 4 Nov 2006 at 16:01

manic_man said:
wow that sounds like one unoptimised game :| 27FPS with your system is NEVER fine, unless your running it at like 1600x1200 etc.. anyway thats irrelavent i spose.

why are you saying such a thing when you know NOTHING about this game? 27FPS is amazing with my system.

RoniisH · 5 Nov 2006 at 13:16

manic_man said:
geez fine i wont help!!

I already know which one to buy, thanks anyway.

RoniisH · 7 Nov 2006 at 20:09

BigDannyO said:
To the OP, to improve your performance you really gotta ditch that dell Mobo, keep all your old components and stick 'em on a new one. Drastic but the best way forward

Yep I hear ya, lol. will do that as soon as I get the cash, but my main priority now is a sound card. (since I'll need it for my new PC anyway, considering sound cards aren't components that are released every week, like graphics card, lol)