Sound Card Question

Dougal95 · 20 Jan 2010 at 15:36

Hi Folks

I have what was once a pretty good sound card, but since going to Windows7 x64, I tend to get a little popping and very short (millisecond) cutouts when gaming.

I can't aford an expensive replacement, but have been looking at new ones. Seems they're a lot dearer these days?

Basically, the question is whether or not there's any advantage with a PCI Express model? Seems the majority are still standard PCI.

My mobo is an Asus P5K-E.

Thanks

fizzy · 20 Jan 2010 at 16:00

I don't believe there's really much difference between using pcie and pci when it comes to sound cards. It just depends on what slots are available on your motherboard, and if any are obscured (or will be obscured) by big graphics cards etc.

PCI slots are also slowly disappearing from modern motherboards too... so if you intend to keep your card for your next pc, then a pcie card would probably be more future proof.

Early PCIe sound cards were a little problematic (I had a pcie creative labs card for a while, which was a pain to get work properly - and drivers were hard to track down etc.).

Is your current card a creative labs model by any chance?

If you want something good but reasonable affordable then I would recommend one of the lower asus xonar cards. I've got a pcie Xonar D2X myself and I think its great.

Using it fine on Windows 7 as well.

Dougal95 · 20 Jan 2010 at 16:17

Yes it's a Creative SB Audigy. Known problems?

fizzy · 20 Jan 2010 at 16:20

Dougal95 said:
Yes it's a Creative SB Audigy. Known problems?

I have heard of various driver related problems with Windows 7 and a lot of creative labs cards - especially the older ones. Believe the same was true with Vista as well. Something to do with the fact that W7/Vista's sound system works differently to XP.