So I bought the X-Fi Fatality Titanium Pro

ambam

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I bought the Creative X-Fi Fatality Titanium Pro for one heck of a good deal. It was on sale for $109.99 and I get a $60 mail in rebate.

It isn't the very best sound card money can buy, but it certainly blows away your motherboard audio. My computer is used mostly for gaming, and the X-Fi Fatality cards are supposed to be the very best "gaming" sound cards. The other ASUS and Auzentech brands are more for things like professional audio editing, recording audio, music, and blu-ray movies.

The X-Fi Fatality series is designed specifically for gaming.

Before I install this card, is there anything I should know about it?
 
The other ASUS and Auzentech brands are more for things like professional audio editing, recording audio, music, and blu-ray movies.

I disagree with this statement, especially since Auznetech uses the X-fi chipset with actual good components...[as opposed to the cheap stuff Creative uses].

Anyway, I recommend ditching Creatives official drivers and using either the PAX or Daniel_K driver sets; you'll save yourself a lot of suffering in the long run, as Creatives drivers have a multitude of problems that crop up.
 

ambam

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Apparently the "holy grail" of PC audio cards is the ASUS Xense, which is $400. There is no way I'm spending that much on an audio card. I'm not sure how it performs in games compared to the creative x-fi "gaming" cards.
 
^^ The Forte is a GREAT card for doing just about anything, and the best X-fi card out there [for what thats worth]. Really hard to argue against it, even if I prefer ASUS [more a matter of taste then anything else; I certianly wouldn't recommend wasting money on a "upgrarde" from a Forte].

And the Xense is so expensive because it comes bundled with a really good Seinheisser headset. I actually put the Xense alone around the same level as the ASUS Xonar D2/D2X.
 
With a analog connection onboard audio will be junk with a Codec that's have a signal loss rate of under a 100 on Avg.

Not true; most of Realteks chipsets have been above 100 for a while now, and their best offerings offer the same exact SnR as Creatives soundcards [108dB]. ASUS, HT Omega, and Auzentech have cards with even higher signal quality [114-120 SnR on the stereo output].

Onboard is actually quite good at this point. Its only downside is its not tuned toward any specific audio range, so nothing really stands out, and the lack of extra upmixing/matrixing/encoding technologies offered.
 
Onboard audio is much improved in the last few years but still sucks imo.
A $50 soundcard is better.
I recently read a P67 roundup that analyzed the onboard audio and it's not that good.
I'm pretty sure the best result was in the low 80db range.
Click the other boards and most are in the 70-80db range.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1495/10/
 

ambam

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Can you recommend any high-quality 5.1 speaker system which might work better than my 2.1 setup?
 

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I have a 5 year old 5.1 speaker system I used on a computer I had a long time ago. Do you think they would still work on my new PC?
 

Currently running speakers bought in 2003 on my Auzentech Forte.
The age of the speakers is not an issue.
My main home hi-fi speakers were bought in the 80's.