Here we go again....gaming sound card advice

Hi. I'm considering a soundcard because I think my onboard is somehow lagging me in F.E.A.R. multiplayer. I noticed every time I hit a metal object in the game my fps take a big hit. I tested and confirmed this with FRAPS by unloading on a metal cart in the Hi-Tech level and several types of metal rails. The bullet on metal clinking sound coincides with a framerate drop from 150+ fps down to the 40's. Very odd. Anyhow, I hope a gaming soundcard will help this. The X-Fi extremegamer (not fatal1ty) seems to be the most popular. Will this work?

Anything is better then onboard sound.

Never played FEAR, but is there an option to disable EAX? Try that first and see what happens. The sound wont be the same because of no FX being applied to the samples, but might help your fps since the CPU no longer would be doing the FX. As I understand it, the CPU does all the EAX FX on the sound when using onboard sound, and even lots of aftermarket el-cheapo cards. Kinda like doing 3D graphics on the CPU instead of the graphics card.

x-fi will increase your fps and reduce/eliminate the lag in these type of situations, but the sound quality may not necessarily be better. Creative has been long known for great gamer cards but the sound quality is only good, not excellent.

Actually the option to enable EAX is grayed out in FEAR so I guess onboard isn't capable. As far as sound quality I'm not THAT picky as long as it's good. I think my onboard sounds pretty good so if a decent sounding card is even better then great. It sounds like an X-fi will sound better, have more options, and improve gameplay in sound heavy situations. Seems fine but if theres something better please suggest. I don't want to spend a ton. I just want hardware acceleration, EAX, and better sound is a bonus.

Well, if you can find a Audigy 2 ZS brand new collecting dust somewhere, it sould be for a very excellent price. It may not be the latest and greatest, but it will do fine for gaming and will be much better then onboard.

There are also very cheap Audigy cards, but I have no idea how good they are. They seem more like OEM cards then retail cards.

Your final recourse is to just get a X-FI based card.

One final note, if your using Vista, Creatives driver support seems to be hit and miss, so you may have to go with a card made by other companies, but then you run into the problem of the card supporting only up to EAX 2. Lots os the top dollar cards with EAX 2 are still software based FX mixing.

Kinda a bad time to be upgrading sound. Still seems to me like either your upgrading for gaming, or your upgrading for quality. But if your running Vista, your better off not upgrading and just waiting to see if driver support improves.

Btw, I just remembered something else. Does FEAR let you set how many sound channels to use? Like 16, 32, 64? If it does, try reducing it to the lowest amount. I just remembered that alot of software based cards also use the cpu for mixing all the channels as well.

I didn't see any options in sound other than minimum\medium\high quality with all eax stuff greyed out. Does the Audigy card do hardware sound acceleration? Thats the main selling point I'm looking at (as long as it sounds at least decent). Thanks by the way.

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Audigy cards (other than probably some of the cut-down SE models/x-fi "xtremeaudio") can do hardware acceleration. I'm still using an Audigy2ZS and it does hardware acceleration and EAX (up to 3 or 4, not sure which). I've thought about upgrading but it works fine for me now on XP/linux and the only card I'd want to get is a b-enspirer but their linux support is pretty terrible at the moment.

grumperfish said:

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Audigy cards (other than probably some of the cut-down SE models/x-fi "xtremeaudio") can do hardware acceleration. I'm still using an Audigy2ZS and it does hardware acceleration and EAX (up to 3 or 4, not sure which). I've thought about upgrading but it works fine for me now on XP/linux and the only card I'd want to get is a b-enspirer but their linux support is pretty terrible at the moment.

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Huh...I think I've seen a couple here and there used for $30. Seems like the way to go if it'll stop the lag in games. Somehow I got the idea that only X-fi did that? I hope your right because cheap is good.

According to the wiki page, Audigy1 vanilla/ES, Audigy2 /ZS/Value, and Audigy 4 cards are hardware accelerated, with EAX 3.0 and 4.0 supported by the Audigy and Audigy2+ cards respectively. It looks like you'll want to avoid the Audigy1 SE/LS, Audigy2 SE, and Live! 24-bit cards.

I have the extremegamer x-fi that you mentioned and have no qualms with it. I would recommend it in a heartbeat, just search around for a good deal.

Another reason I bought it is because it has front panel audio pins on it so you can hook up audio ports that are on your chassis.

Ok cool thanks guys. I do like the thought of connecting the sound card to the front audio jack on my case since it sounds like total crap connected to the motherboard jack.

if you don't want to spend too much, try the Chaintech AV-710

Well I finally got it figured out. I found a one month old used x-fi xtrememusic in the classifieds for $60 and I'm going to mod it with a $6 black gate op amp and an $8 black gate electrolytic capacitor which supposedly makes it sound amazing. I've done a bit of soldering so it should be pretty easy. Thanks again for the help.

The blackgate is easy, the opamp is difficult since it's soooo small.

If you have not purchased the op amps, I do have 2 leftover from my mod project. I failed completely on my upgrade (did it all well till the opamps) then destroyed my card.

Here's pics of my failure and end result (where i got mad and tore it all apart with wire clippers.



After that disaster I purchased an x-fi prelude from Auzen.

LOL. Ok sorry had to get that out of my sytem. I know the feeling and hopefully I won't do the same but knowing me I'll probably destroy mine as well. I wish I hadn't already ordered my opamps but now that you mention it I could use one more to be able to use surround with full quality in the future. National semiconductor wouldn't give me more than 3 of the things and unless I'm mistaken I need 4 to replace them all right? I guess the deciding factor will be how well replacing the first one goes. Thanks for the offer I may very well take you up on that. I might even have something extra lying around that you want like a chipset cooler or a sata cable or something random like that. I'll get back to you thanks. I'm thinking maybe a piece of tape will make the soldering easier but who knows. Wish me luck.

Holding it place is only half the battle, it's getting that perfect amount of solder on the pad without overlapping to the other leg.

You'll understand when you get the chips or the card, they are literally less than a millimeter apart.



Do the first upgrade for the headphones. If it goes well and works out, then we can talk about that extra chip. I'd basically only charge you shipping, which would be cents on the dollar because it doesn't weigh anything. Let me know, if I didn't toss my card in the garbage can I have the blackgate also I could just snip off with some wire cutters.

Cool thanks. So are you not sure whether you threw your card out or not? If not I could definitely use the capacitor and would appreciate it greatly. Again I'd gladly give up some of my random junk that I'm not using in return. Much better than paying an outrageous price for shipping and handling from an online shop. I couldn't find it for under $15 or so even though it should be a couple bucks.

Using a good solder sucker and and low wattage iron (15 watts) with a very fine tip should do the trick. Just don't use the solder wick and you be fine.

The more I hear about it the more I realize I don't know what I'm doing. Thinking about giving a tv repair guy $20 to do it right. I'll be pretty mad at myself if I blow it and kill my card.