Which sound card to buy?

[tiger102]

Hi, I been having problems with my sound card when playing games, especially FEAR. I believe i have pin point my problem, and i think its my sound card. I tried lowering the sound quality didn't really work, so i believe i need a non onboard sound card.

All i have is 2 speakers, so i don't need a fancy sound card. But i do need a sound card that would be able to work with new games or any games. Also my price range is under $100. If anything a bit higher than $100 dollars than you can recommend it if you think its going to benefit me.

I don't know much about sound cards, if you know a very good review please give me a link. in advance, i think you all for your reply and recommendations .

 

[Slobogob]

I´ve heard quite a lot good things about the x-fi. Given your price range only the cheapest model might be within reach. I read that FEAR uses a lot of EAX features and is pretty sound intensive, so i´m not surprised your onboard sound doesn´t work properly.
Before buying a new card, have you tried to get new drivers for your sound card or lowering the hardware acceleration?

I´ve used onboard sound with FEAR (Some nasty, cheap realtek 97) but it worked without flaws.

 

[gooeykat]

Anything X-fi, cause it rocks. THG has a review on it somewhere.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2010360057+1101019077&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=57

 

[3lfk1ng]

For a cheap card you cannot beat the x-fi XtremeMusic. Make sure that is the cheapest card you will go with because they other "cheaper" cards in Creatives line up will require cpu utilization for there performance. The XtremeMusic is the cheapest card in Creatives lineup that has it's own processor which will offset your processors load and increase the framerate ever so slightly.

But for the more expensive cards...you know; In the future when and if you upgrade (also for anyone who is reading this)
I personally would avoid the x-fi for something that is worthy of a high price point.

It's frequency of sound is much more broad than any card in Creatives line.

Compare the two for yourself.
Creative vs Auzentech

Creatives most expensive card gets rocked by the Auzentech that is much cheaper.

Anyways,
Best of luck
~3lfk1ng

 

[tiger102]

I have set the hardware acceleration in the dxdiag to "no acceleration" and still the same thing. and have set the sound settings in FEAR COMBAT MULTILAYER to minimum and still the same thing, it just crazy weird. I just know when i disable the sound, it runs pretty good, but the disadvantage is of course no sound, lol. What kind of game play without sound.

 

[tiger102]

My mistake, on the FEAR configuration, the one that is not inside the game, but outside, i forget to uncheck "disable hardware sound", because i had everything checked expect "disable sound", which was processing sound through software and not through hardware. So I unchecked "disable hardware sound" and it seems to work fine. But i did put the sound on no acceleration and in the game i configured it to minimum or low settings. good think i figured that out, if i didn't then i would've had to buy a sound card. I think for now i'll stick to onboard sound until maybe later on. But thank you all for the recommendations and links.

 

[slim142]

Hey Elf

do you own this card? how come are you the sound is that better than creatives card? Im really in doubt now cuz i wanted to get the Fatal1ty FPS series but now... I really dont know

 

[Statross]

http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/399/

X-Fi wins everytime...even though they say it sounds better, that must be BS...but who knows.

my FPS is the bollocks