Sound card advice please

[Wing Nut]

My Creative sound card (Audigy 2ZS) has problems with my Accusim airplanes. Am thinking of getting another card.

Looking for recommendations.

Thanks

[harleyman]

Drop it for onboard sound..You will have no problems then......

Most newer MoBos have great 5-1 or 7-1 sound these days...

[glennc]

I disconnected an onboard realtek "card" for a Creative Labs X-Fi Gamemaster. It increased frames by about 5 in the P-47 with Accusim and I am hearing things I hadn't heard earlier. It didn't have the great of an impact on the F1 Cessna Mustang. I guess that's the difference between sound intensive and graphics intensive.

Glenn

[Buddha13]

Hi all,
The Audigy is getting a bit old now for modern systems.The X-Fi series of cards are really good.Got 3 of them.The best of them IMHO is the Extreme Music.

Buddha13

[6297J]

Onboard sound is definately not the way to go - it will impact on fps.
I'd also recommend an X-Fi card.

[harleyman]

Well I see it differently...Onboard sound was great back in the Pentium lag days, and any extra CPU to be gained was a bonus..

These days with the core duo chips dual and quad they are so powerful that I feel there is really nothing to gain by using an add on card with its own processor...

I mean onboard hardly uses anything, and if thats the make or break on weather you have good FSX results or not then you need more horsepower...period...JMO now on this.....

[kilo delta]

Hi all,
The Audigy is getting a bit old now for modern systems.The X-Fi series of cards are really good.Got 3 of them.The best of them IMHO is the Extreme Music.

Buddha13

I've 3x extreme music soundcards sitting on a shelf, gathering dust. I decided to stick with the onboard sound for my main pc's.

[6297J]

It's more a case of every little helps plus a dedicated sound card simply produces better sound, full stop.
My old PC had onboard sound. I disabled that and put in an Audigy 4 - I thought that sounded good. My new PC has an X-FI Extreme Audio and the difference with the same speaker set is incredible.

[Alexraptor]

I'm running an X-FI XtremeGamer.
Runs great :)

[FLighT01]

Drop it for onboard sound..You will have no problems then......

Most newer MoBos have great 5-1 or 7-1 sound these days...


I couldn't agree more. Using MOBO sound on both my setups and they work very well. Eliminates a potential source of problems with additional drivers floating around, been there, done that. After locating a rogue sound card driver on my newest box after 7 months of putting up with complete system freezes, I stumbled on one, deleted it, now getting absolutely the best FSX performance I've ever experienced with no, and I mean no, CTD's, OOM's or lockups and at the highest graphic settings. When I purchased the most recent box it came with a separate soundcard that had a dead channel so I sent it back and asked that the card be removed and put it on MOBO sound. Which they did, but they never removed the driver or the software which gave me no end of aggravation until I figured the problem out myself. YMMV but that's been my experience.

[stansdds]

On board sound is the simple route and that's what I'm using on my current rig, but it does not sound as good as a nice sound card. My rig uses the Realtek ALC-889A chip set and it's ok, but with twin piston engine aircraft I get some strange sounds at certain RPM's. Adjusting the sound settings and trying newer drivers has made no improvements. I never had these odd sounds with my old SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS. The bad thing about SoundBlaster is their drivers, the current ones often conflict with other drivers on a computer and the drivers have become bloatware.

[harleyman]

I agree Stansdds..

The Creative Drivers have many known issues with Nvidia drivers causing some much grief..

I also think it depends on your mobo too for how good onboard sound is..

I have the last generation Gigabyte X48 mobo with 7-1 surround on it and I have no complaints with it at all...

[Kiwikat]

You can't go wrong with the X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro. It used to be 125 on newegg now it says 140... hmm

You can definitely find it cheaper than 140.

[JIMJAM]

Just my take on it. I have always HAD to have the cutting edge hardware. The sound card is the least of importance IMO.When the latest Creative card came out I snatched one up and installed it. Of course i noticed no difference but I knew it was there. About 2 weeks later it stopped working. Something in it failed so I returned it to BB. I had already sold the earlier card so I went digging through my pile of vid cards,sound cars and found a very old sound blaster Audigy first release. Installed it and again, no difference betreen it and the latest greatest card.
Especially in the flight sims, sound is very basic. I never saw any performance differences in any of my sound card upgrades. BTW- I have the Pyramat gaming chair with the subwoofer and speakers in the head rest.Its the executive looking chair not the one you sit down on the floot. A MUST for hardcore Simmers as you can feel the sounds vibrate through out your body. With the old warbirds,crank it up and its hard to even focus on the screen. Gear down and you get that THUMP in your ass. Great product.