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.

fraseredwards · 3 Nov 2006 at 09:17

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

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.

manic_man · 3 Nov 2006 at 20:40

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 definately 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.

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.

manic_man · 4 Nov 2006 at 15:37

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.

If you dont need multichannel digital out its got to be an X-Fi, simple as that. Expect another 5 or so FPS and slightly better surround sound effects

Whether you get the music or gamer is up to you really but fro mwhat I can tell the X-Ram busines makes little to no difference in most situations as games have to be programmed to make specific use of it via the OpenAL API. I dont know if Flight Sim X is..

Also I would personally go the "old" music over the "new" gamer (the one without X-Ram) myself as I cant see any improvements other than the removal of a few connectors.. maybe im wrong, but I have been looking since it was released! In fact if anyone knows why the "new" gamer is better than the old "old" music and why its worth a tenner more i'd be interested to hear? (other than its "HD front panel connector")

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.

james.miller · 4 Nov 2006 at 16:03

RoniisH said:
I'm not asking for opinion, I'm asking which one of these two cards I oughta by.

that would be giving you an opinion, right?

manic_man · 4 Nov 2006 at 16:06

geez fine i wont help!!

RoniisH · 5 Nov 2006 at 13:16

manic_man said:
geez fine i wont help!!

I already know which one to buy, thanks anyway.

ALienBC · 7 Nov 2006 at 14:20

I guess the argument's over but it still sounds like a weird situation to me - what onboard sound does your mobo use? Do you get framerate drops in other games with sound on? It might just be an issue with Flightsim I guess, but the first thing it put me in mind of is dodgy sound driver install or a resource conflict.

abc

BigDannyO · 7 Nov 2006 at 15:26

The on-board sound on my old Dell Dim 4700 was utter cack, wasn't your usual AC97 job but some other rubbish. Think it was something like Analogue Devices 198x... The last driver updates were produced about 2 years ago!! :eek:

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

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)