Recommend a sound card

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

Man of Honour
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
160,163
Hi guys,

Fancy a soundcard. Currently using an Audigy 1 from 6 years ago and the IP35 Pro onboard sound. Feel that a decent card will be better.

I mostly use my PC for gaming, movies and the odd bit of music. I have a headset and some 6.1 speakers.

I was looking at an XFi for around £60 but the different versions are confusing. What do you guys recommend? Spec is as per sig. I'm using XP 32bit.
 
X-Fi Xtreme music, or if you can't find one of those, X-Fi Xtreme Gamer. Unless you need the extras the other cards aren't really worth the additional cash and the Xtreme Audio is too cut down to be a real upgrade from your Audigy. X-RAM is a gimmick as well - really not worth having.

There's also the Prelude but that's quite expensive and not really all that useful unless you've got the audio equipment to take advantage of the improved DACs or require the Dolby/DTS encoding.

edit: just noticed the 4GB RAM...that may be a problem with the X-Fi. Apparently there's a patch for the prelude (also based on X-Fi) but I don't think this works with the standard X-Fi cards. As I said above though, there aren't really any other real world benefits to this card unless you need the specialist features.
 
I have 4GB RAM and an Xtreme Music and I have no problems under Vista X64. That said, I don't use the Creative drivers, I use the modified YOUPAX ones - worth looking out for...

I would recommend the Music too, but it doesn't have the case front panel connector, which I believe is on the Xtreme Gamer?

The Prelude IS better, but it's twice your budget...
 
OT, but why are you using 4gb with XP 32bit?

At a guess you bought it as it was cheap with the intention of upgrading to Vista?
 
I bought it becuase it was cheap. Windows utilises 3.25Gb.

I've got a legitimate Windows Vista license here for Vista Business but don't want to take the plunge yet.
 
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