Best Sound Card for Gaming

I am running a mother board that has built in sound and am looking to pick up a seperate sound card. The main use for the sound card will be for gaming. I have been looking into the Audigy or Audigy 2, but wanted to get opinions from people here on other cards out there such as the Audiotrak Prodigy, Soundblaster Live, Hercules Fortissimo, etc. I am only running Klipsch 4.1 speakers and didn't plan on upgrading anytime soon. Any help or opinions are appreciated.

Here are my specs:
P4 2.53
512MB RAM
40GB Internal HD
120GB External USB HD
Geforce4 4400
NEC DVD ROM
Sony DRU-500A DVD Burner
Klipsch 4.1 Speakers


Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!!

The best sound card for gaming is the Aureal SQ2500. Unfortunately the company is out of business for over 2 years now, and Creative bought their "intelectual property" without assuming any responsibility for support, so end user support falls on a group of dedicated end users.

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A3D had better technology to begin with. EAX continues to get better and better, but A3D 2.0 is still at the top IMO. The reason other chip makers don't support it is because it requires a hardware layer, but it seems odd that nobody has tried to make a new hardware layer that's comapatable with the supporting software.

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<A HREF="http://www.vortexofsound.com" target="_new">http://www.vortexofsound.com</A> Chris Day has a website with a patch that allows you to use the Vortex controll panel with Microsoft's XP driver. And a group of guys are trying to develope new drivers independantly.

Win98SE driver 2048 was perfect, but of course required Win9x to use.

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<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

And lets watch NVidia slowly crush Creative. I have to say the intergrated SoundStorm is making people not buy add-on cards anymore and for people who don't have them... hopefully NVidia will soon move into the sound card market seeing that there SoundStorm was such a success and I have to say it's a nice piece of hardware. I wouldn't be suprised if NVidia would sell this product for about $30 or $40 which would compete with something like an Audigy that costs about $100 and there goes Creative.... I hope they die.

YES!

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I just tell it like it is and some can't handle it. If your experience is different, well congratu-fukulation.
<b>I’M NOT A ATI FANBOY, I’M NOT A NV FANBOY, I’M A STABILITY FANBOY</b>

Oh wow somebody actually got their Audigy to work in a game! Consider yourself lucky, and don't try any other software. Your situation is unique, since you have a SB that is working. Most are not so lucky as you, and exerience constant static/popping/skipping.

I say try the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, or an NForce2 soundsystem if possible. They both work much more solidly in games than any creative labs product I've tried, and sound great too. The only downside (if you can really call it that) is the lack of support for the newest EAX's.

The fact that you have never heard of these problems points to you living in isolation or something. The "there is a problem with those cards" theme is fairly universal, you can even see it on CL's own web forums if they haven't closed them because of this fact. No offense but, the general rule is that those who say they haven't had any problems, just haven't done much with their soundcard.

The problems I have experienced are not related to the rest of the system as they seem to follow the cards around. For example, on my wifes machine a P2-400 on an old Tyan M/B with a BX chipset the SBLive causes scratchy staticky sounds during a specific game, remove SBlaster/drivers install TBSC/drivers in same slot, and boom problem gone.

The same sound card in the above example has been in a BX chipset motherboard, some old VIA chipset I can't remmeber now, and an ALI majik 1 chipset motherboard. The problem is always with the card. I once had the idea it might be a bad soundcard so I replaced it with a SBLive value, same damn thing.

I have now gone through a SBAWE32, SBLive, and SBAudigy1, all with the same results. All Creative Labs soundcards are garbage.

If all that doesn't convince you , then you are very stubborn and must learn it for yourself.

True but most of us old timers here know what we see coming in with problems.

Audigys are coming in with popping, scratching ect. thats with all the time Creative has had to fix or improve these issues..many of the problems are the original SB Live! issues.

I have only seen one TBSC issue come in and that was with a specific game and has yet to be reproduced.
Similar situation on the Revo.

Reason being other forums are different is because the other forums (Anand/OCP) have many more members, we use a less attractive forum setup and its quite messy to navigate around here IMO. But we're a tighter community with less of your everday joes that pickup an Audigy 2 from best buy because they
A. Dont have the knowledge of their tech problems to know better
B. Dont know the history behind creative screwing over their customers
C. Fall for Creatives marketing

EAX3.0 is a joke, I'm sure 4 is also.
I dont know why they even bother adding more reverb effects without adding in some kind of advanced 3d positioning like A3D was.

I'll tell you why, it looks good on a box, makes kids feel good they think they have the latest and greatest.. then they flood forums because they have problems.

The problem is, besides Creatives compatibility/driver issues they are a flight of stairs behind the technology they bought out years ago.

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I just tell it like it is and some can't handle it. If your experience is different, well congratu-fukulation.
<b>I’M NOT A ATI FANBOY, I’M NOT A NV FANBOY, I’M A STABILITY FANBOY</b>

Hi Dodgy_Bob. I admit there are many games where I had no problems. On the other hand, there are some games that the soundblaster lives can't do right on any known configuration. It just so happens that the one game I have been into for years sounds very bad.

So far my Santa Cruise and Nforce sound systems are flawless for game playing as far as the sound implementation goes. I just got sick of the crappy gaming sounds w/ the CL parts.

I think if you use your soundcard for mostly musical stuff you may never experience problems w/ the CL stuff, but for games they gotta ways to go.

Most Microsoft games have troubles, but the 2 that made me the most mad were Motocross Madness 1&2. I have more hours on these games than I care to admit. The motorcycle engine sounds were never quite right, and crash sounds were choppy.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Kinney!!

<""you are severely undereducated on pc audio."">

LOL, what kind of education do we need? It is as simple as plug and cry.

..this is very useful and helpful place for information...

Kinney, I don't know you at all but as comperter nerds go ,we are all experts DON'T YOU KNOW!

Creative is junk. Period.

Your comparison's, and all these other fanboy's comparisons, are useless. Why? You've never stated what you're comparing against.

We know what we're comparing against here. We've all heard creative, turtle beach, m-audio, guillemot, soundstorm, and in some cases terratec and RME. I doubt you have. That's how we know that creative is pulling up the rear in the sound department.

Sure, a Geo Metro feels fast, compared to a Model T. But if that's your basis for comparison, then you have nothing to go on. Drive a Porsche Carrera GT or a Shelby GT500, and then see how you rate your Metro.

Look at the big picture, there's a lot more than creative out there, and when you actually use your ears, you'll see that creative just isn't all it can be. If you're happy, great. Most knowledgeable people aren't, and when less-knowledgeable people asks questions, the knowledgeable people tell the truth.

umheint0's phat setup --> <A HREF="http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umheint0/system.html" target="_new">http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~umheint0/system.html</A><--

I got a soundblaster live 5.1. got it when I still had my AMD k6-2 333mhz, windows 98. it worked flawlessly on that machine. but I gave that machine to a friend and now am using it on my AMD 2000+ windows xp. it's pathetic. I get so tired of the clicking, popping, etc.; it's endless. I think it's lack of driver support. what do most people do to solve the problem when nothing else works? purchase another sound card. first choice of most folks being...another creative. they're just ripping you off. a common theme these days among a lot of the folks involved in the PC business. that's why my new machine wasn't built by HP like my first one. wasn't built by Dell, Gateway, IBM, etc. bought it from DIT. it's got some flaws but they are much more easily resolved than the crap I was dealing with when I had my HP system. gaming is no different

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by georgebeee on 12/13/03 08:24 PM.</EM></FONT></P>