Associate
- Joined
- 29 Jan 2007
- Posts
- 731
Many people stick with onboard sound these days, but for gaming moving forward, OpenAL and older games, what actually works best? Or should I say what actually works as intended!
For those with the Xonar, you can also chip in as well with your experiences.
Do the Realtek software codecs truly support OpenAL sounds and effects in games as well as the X-Fi titanium (and earlier PCI versions) do in hardware? Also I've heard their EAX 2 support isn't implemented correctly for older games - effects and positional audio are not right. In this day and age of multi core CPU's, software sound kind of makes sense but if it's not working correctly then a dedicated card is the way to go.
Are the sounds as clear and well processed (ignoring analog vs digital out quality as dedicated cards nearly always have better analog outputs). Do rear speakers and positional audio work as they should on the realtek through analog and digital out?
Or are creatives OpenAL and EAX software drivers much better on the xtreme gamer cards, which don't have the full X-Fi chip and do EAX and OpenAL in software similar to Realtek, but of course offer Alchemy and up to EAX 4. Do these cut down cards sound better in games than onboard - do they do positional audio and effects better than Realtek?
Last of course we have the Titanium series and the true X-Fi chip PCI series - these do up to EAX 5 and OpenAL in hardware as far as I can tell. Are these the best for games? Much better than software solutions? All outputs and positional audio and effects working as they should in games?
It's just so confusing what the best choices are for gaming these days and if hardware X-Fi vs the software X-Fi vs onboard solutions are that much different apart from CPU load.
For those with the Xonar, you can also chip in as well with your experiences.
Do the Realtek software codecs truly support OpenAL sounds and effects in games as well as the X-Fi titanium (and earlier PCI versions) do in hardware? Also I've heard their EAX 2 support isn't implemented correctly for older games - effects and positional audio are not right. In this day and age of multi core CPU's, software sound kind of makes sense but if it's not working correctly then a dedicated card is the way to go.
Are the sounds as clear and well processed (ignoring analog vs digital out quality as dedicated cards nearly always have better analog outputs). Do rear speakers and positional audio work as they should on the realtek through analog and digital out?
Or are creatives OpenAL and EAX software drivers much better on the xtreme gamer cards, which don't have the full X-Fi chip and do EAX and OpenAL in software similar to Realtek, but of course offer Alchemy and up to EAX 4. Do these cut down cards sound better in games than onboard - do they do positional audio and effects better than Realtek?
Last of course we have the Titanium series and the true X-Fi chip PCI series - these do up to EAX 5 and OpenAL in hardware as far as I can tell. Are these the best for games? Much better than software solutions? All outputs and positional audio and effects working as they should in games?
It's just so confusing what the best choices are for gaming these days and if hardware X-Fi vs the software X-Fi vs onboard solutions are that much different apart from CPU load.
Last edited: