Good Budget Sound Card

[athlondude]

I was wondering would anyone recommend a good budget sound card ($50 or less) that would compare to the Creative X-FI series, but is not a creative card?

 

[mister g]

No such thing, my question why sound card, hardly tell the difference.
http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?page=2&sortby=match&category=HH3&subcategory=HH3B&web_group=byopc_sound&

 

[athlondude]

No such thing, my question why sound card, hardly tell the difference.
http://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.phtml?page=2&sortby=match&category=HH3&subcategory=HH3B&web_group=byopc_sound&

I have a few games that are very CPU dependant, so much that it takes up 100% of my CPU, the last thing I need is an onboard sound chip taking away from that. I m not looking for an exact duplicate, just something in the same ball park as my X-FI Extreme gamer (not the fatality, the cheap one).

 

[saaiello]

So you have a dedicated sound card an X-fi and you want to trash that and get a cheapo sound card doesnt make sense.

The only card that is cheap that is decent and not creative would be the ASUS xonar DS

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132013

 

[mister g]

Tell me a game that is CPU dependent, tell me PC specs, a Cpu upgrade might be worth it over a sound card.

 

[athlondude]

Well the biggest brute that I have right now is Rise of Flight. On my E8400 it maxes out the CPU at 100% all the time, and from what I hear it takes up 75% of a quad core CPU, and I guess it was actually written to take advantadge of quad core CPUs. Aside from that this X-FI extreme gamer I got was one of the first releases, and it did not deliver as well as claimed at all. Alot of people and reviews boasted an additional 15 fps in games which I never saw, the drivers were buggy right out of the box, and when I went to Vista and Win7 it didn't play nice either. So I guess considering the driver support, the limited 60 or 90 day warranty that it came with (oh sure you could get more for an additional fee), and the technical greif that it gave me when upgrading my OS, I would be happy with something less as long as it sounded good, gave me less hassle, and had good support.

 

[athlondude]

Tell me a game that is CPU dependent, tell me PC specs, a Cpu upgrade might be worth it over a sound card.

I forgot my system specs are as follows:

Intel E8400 Core 2 Duo
Geforce GTX 260 core 216
4Gb DDR 800 Ram
Gigabyte G31M-ES2L Mainboard
Rosewill PCIx gigabit ethernet adapter
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit edition

And I am planning on moving to a quad core soon.

 

[mindless728]

TBH just use the integrated sound since it is using maybe 2% for the audio from the processor

and keep in mind that budget sound cards will not offload that much work anyways, not until you start getting into more expensive cards does this start to happen

all in all, save the money for the quad you want