Today's onboard sound vs. X-Fi Titanium

Sumanji · 21 May 2018 at 00:48

Hey,

I'm putting together a component list for a new gaming machine and I'm wondering if onboard audio on high end motherboards today (e.g. an ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate) is better than an old sound card I have (X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro)?

I play a lot of FPS (PUBG, CSS) so positional audio is pretty important to me - I don't really know much about audio, so please shine your wisdom on me

Cheers,

Su

(P.S. Even though it's like ~8 years old, the X-Fi seems to have Windows 10 drivers available).

Rroff · 21 May 2018 at 02:15

In my experience my XtremeMusic was better than any onboard I tried however when it got to around 10 years old was definitely starting to degrade in quality - replacing it with a Sound BlasterX AE-5 was worth it for me.

Minusorange · 21 May 2018 at 02:20

Sumanji said:
(P.S. Even though it's like ~8 years old, the X-Fi seems to have Windows 10 drivers available).

I'm still using my 12 year old X-Fi Fatality which works perfectly so don't worry about age

Sumanji · 21 May 2018 at 17:11

Rroff said:
...however when it got to around 10 years old was definitely starting to degrade in quality

Ah interesting; do you mean physical degradation? Like maybe the caps on it were getting old or something? Or just software not keeping up?

Cheers,

Su

Rroff · 21 May 2018 at 17:15

Sumanji said:
Ah interesting; do you mean physical degradation? Like maybe the caps on it were getting old or something? Or just software not keeping up?

Cheers,

Su

The sound quality definitely wasn't what it used to be - I suspect capacitors were starting to go the big 220uF one on there is well known for not being the best brand.