who makes the best sound cards

[The_Real_DeaL31]

yo guys, looking to upgrade both motherboards with a half decent sound card, i don't want to pay 300 dollars on a card lol, more like $80 150 range, i heard creative cards are not so great no more, compared to back in the old days, creative had no competition, so whats the best company out there, i don't want something that's just a step up from on board, looking for a good high quality sound card that supports eax3 and up, that wont restrict my fps while playing a game, that's the whole purpose i want to buy one thanks..

 

[Flyordie]

Depends on OS... if XP then Creative Labs.
If Vista... onboard is the most stable. But remember, your sound is only as good as your speakers/earbuds.

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

using 2 sets logitech 540/530 5.1

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

why does it matter on OS, one system i use win xp pro, other vista ultimate 32bit

 

[Medros]

creative has had some driver problems with vista, not a clue if it's cleared up yet or not though

 

[ShadowFold]

I'm using the March 09 drivers on my Audigy on 7 and Vista and it works great. I say grab a ASUS or Creative, I have both and they are equally good sounding.

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

can u send me a few linkies to whats good or bad or to look for thanks

 

[MKmods]

like ShadowFold mentioned I vote Asus D1 (works excellent with XP, Vista,32 or 64)

Here is the one I use (PCI) but there is a DX one as well thats PCI X
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132007

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

looking for pci-e

 

[ShadowFold]

ASUS makes some top quality xonar PCIE X1 cards. I have the PCIE X1 in my HTPC and it's amazing. We have a set of Logitech Z-5500's too.

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

nice card, good specs eax 3 to 5, sweet price also, whats it like for drivers support

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

down side its only pci, would i lose fps in games, or would pci-e be better

 

[MN12BIRD]

Not sure how reliant it is but when Maximum PC tested the top PCI-e X-Fi vs the PCI Xtream Gamer version they actually got a better frame rate with the PCI version! This came as a surprise to them and the Fatality X-Fi is native PCI-e (no PCI bridge controller tricks). The only plus side I saw was the cure of X-Fi sound glitches on some NForce chipsets caused by excessive requests on the PCI bus.

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

so nether words your saying, use a creative sound card with x-fi, for nvidia chipsets

 

[MN12BIRD]

I had an Xtreame Gamer X-Fi on an NF 570u board and the clipping noise was bad. I downloaded the latest drivers and BIOS for the motherboard witch helped but never completely eliminated the noise. It was a common problem with some NForce chipsets. I actually thought my card was damaged for awhile until I realized it worked fine on my P45 board.

Creative card if you're a hardcore XP gamer perhaps. But otherwise I'd look elsewhere. I couldn't even get the card to work in Linux (Creative officially canned support) and I've heard the Vista drivers suck too. There are better cards for sound quality such as the Xonar or Prelude. Course the Prelude still uses an X-Fi chipset so I'm not sure how good Vista drivers would be with that either.

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

what u recommend, is xi-fi the best future to look for games etc

 

[ShadowFold]

Anything is better than onboard. I'm using a Creative Audigy 4(no X-Fi) in my gaming rig and it sounds a lot better than the onboard. If you're building a kick ass HTPC area then grab an expensive one, but if you're just gaming and using headphones to watch movies grab a cheaper one.

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

thanks for heads up mn12bird, cause one of the boards that i need a sound card for, is a msn sli deluxe 570 nforce chipset

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

so i am taking its not like the older days, were games need to have eax to 5, or hardware enabled

 

[KainXS]

the best soundcard I have used is my new asus card, much better audio quality than my annoying X-Fi titanium had, but loses fps in some games.

its a sucky situation with these cards though, creative will not letter another company use EAX 3 4 or 5 natively, and creatives software is great but at the same time its a pain

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

company's don't make sense, cant have one thing without the other, good quality sound or no driver support or eax unless its creative with bad drivers, or lose frames i got it thanks

 

[MKmods]

down side its only pci, would i lose fps in games, or would pci-e be better

there is no down side, Just get the DX version...

As to losing frames, lol most of us are no longer using single core CPUs...

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

iam using a quad, and a dual core what u mean

 

[The_Real_DeaL31]

whats dx version?

 

[MKmods]

how can you have all those comps and have no clue how to use google?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829132006