Buying New Comp Parts...

[kick]

The good old Audigy 2 is (still) the best card Creative has ever made (especially with the kX drivers [on Windows] or ALSA/JACK [on Linux]).

"Hot" outputs,superb positional audio,good quality 20-bit converters,low latency,no noticeable distortion even at 100% volume,great MIDI synth,very good drivers and compatibility.

The only "problem" with the Audigy2 series was the low-quality resampling of 44.1kHz streams.

But with the design of the Audigy 2 card,even that wasn't an issue if you used the P16V (HD) outputs (but you lose the hardware acceleration).

If you use the HD P16V output,the stream is resampled with a higher quality algorithm to 24bit/96kHz,bypassing the DSP...no low-quality double resampling 48kHz crap.

Creative's X-Fi series is pure bull...unnecessarily overcomplicated design:
Useless X-RAM (LOL),waste of such a powerful chip, awful drivers. no improvement in the quality of the converters over the Audigy2 series,the 3 'modes' of operation, etc.

FYI,there's a brand new (signed!) 64-bit kX driver for Win7 / Vista

As for onboard audio,I prefer the SoundMAX chips.
Best sound quality,amazingly good under Linux.
(just don't buy ASUS boards with SoundMAX chips if you're using Windows - their drivers suck)

[I.S.T.]

It's not a DSP, FYI. It's an FPGA chip.

[kick]

It's not a DSP, FYI. It's an FPGA chip.

fixed

[kode54]

waste of such a powerful chip ... no improvement in the quality of the converters over the Audigy2 series

Huh? I read that it has sample rate conversion comparable to SSRC and other high quality software resamplers.

awful drivers

And I have yet to have a problem with the X-Fi drivers.

superb positional audio

Also, X-Fi has the excellent CMSS 3D feature, which when using headphones, virtualizes the surround speakers. I believe the headphone virtualization filter that kX features is ripped from Creative's drivers. Or something.

Of course, my onboard HD audio device also features a headphone virtualization feature, but it doesn't sound as nice as the CMSS 3D effect. Better than nothing at all, I suppose.

[Gil_Hamilton]

The good old Audigy 2 is (still) the best card Creative has ever made (especially with the kX drivers [on Windows] or ALSA/JACK [on Linux]).

I've heard the e-Mu boards are pretty awesome. But they're not really targetted at consumers.




Personally, I've got an Asus Xonar DX.
...
Driving a cheap PC speaker set. DOH!

[kode54]

Personally, I've got an Asus Xonar DX.

Any problems with sound-playing programs crashing on system shutdown if you fail to stop them first? Someone in #foobar2000 reported such a problem with his Xonar, where he would leave foobar2000 playing or paused, and it would crash on shutdown instead of closing and saving the settings proper. No such problem with onboard audio.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Personally, I've got an Asus Xonar DX.

Any problems with sound-playing programs crashing on system shutdown if you fail to stop them first? Someone in #foobar2000 reported such a problem with his Xonar, where he would leave foobar2000 playing or paused, and it would crash on shutdown instead of closing and saving the settings proper. No such problem with onboard audio.

The only problems I've had are connected to EAX emulation.
Disabling that fixed everything.

[franpa]

And I have yet to have a problem with the X-Fi drivers.

superb positional audio

Also, X-Fi has the excellent CMSS 3D feature, which when using headphones, virtualizes the surround speakers. I believe the headphone virtualization filter that kX features is ripped from Creative's drivers. Or something.

1) can you turn up the volume in the Creative Application Launcher without any distortion being introduced? say set it to 70 or so %

2) does your microphone and line in work?

3) what model is your XFI and what driver version/package are you using?

[kode54]

1) can you turn up the volume in the Creative Application Launcher without any distortion being introduced? say set it to 70 or so %

I can for when I have my speakers connected. I keep it at 20% for my headphones unless I want to blow my ears out.

2) does your microphone and line in work?

I believe they're both combined to the same port. They worked when I had my sound card installed in my old system, but I haven't found a need for them since.

3) what model is your XFI and what driver version/package are you using?

Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic, and Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series Driver 2.18.0008, the latest as of December 17, 2008. Oh, and also Creative ALchemy 1.20.04, a little old but fully functional.

[Nightcrawler]

kick, please quit talking out your rear.

http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/sho ... i=2518&p=1

Go educate yourself and come back later when you want to actually discuss hardware facts. X-fi hardware (on appropriate models) far exceeds everything the Audigy 2 had to offer.

[Deathlike2]

out of curiosity, dl2, what's the native res on the display you're planning on using?

1600x1050 Widescreen is becoming the trend... *shrugs*

Intel's HDA is the only major reason why Creative's trying to do whatever marketing it takes to not suck so much... it's not really worth it anymore...

[sweener2001]

if you can find a radeon 4850 cheaper than the 260, i'd recommend that card.

it's a ridiculous power-house for the price. i know for a fact that it can handle mass effect at 1920x1200 with just about everything turned on. and since the 4850 has been out awhile, you should be able to find it relatively cheap, and the drivers for it have had some time to mature.

it might not own crysis at your resolution, but that's not your goal. although i think it would still definitely be playable.

[odditude]

see slickdeals for a 4850 @ $86 AR

[Deathlike2]

Hmmm... nice.

I.S.T: Is there an equivalent Gigabyte Intel board that has DDR3 support?

[I.S.T.]

Hmmm... nice.

I.S.T: Is there an equivalent Gigabyte Intel board that has DDR3 support?

Hmm. I accidentally linked to a DDR3 board already, as it turns out. DDR3 is useless on anything Intel and consumer level except for the i7s.

Here is a DDR2 board that is almost identical: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128372

gigabyte sadly has a lot of models that are nearly the same. -_-

[Deathlike2]

Hmm. I accidentally linked to a DDR3 board already, as it turns out. DDR3 is useless on anything Intel and consumer level except for the i7s.

I thought Intel was memory bandwidth starved... am I reading this right? Hmm.. I thought this would apply more to AMD....

[I.S.T.]

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Current DDR2 sets are more than fine for anything not i7(i7 has been proven to get upwards of a 15% performance difference with mega fast DDR3.). DDR3 on Core 2s is useless and money wasted unless you want to use the RAM later on in an i7 or later build.

Sort of like how DDR2 was useless compared to DDR at first. It's taken DDR3 longer than DDR2 took to really catch on, though.

[odditude]

DDR3 has no performance benefits vs DDR2 unless you're overclocking (because you can hit higher synchronous fsb/memory speeds with decent ddr3). you're not overclocking; the difference between DDR2-1066 and DDR3-1333 is negligible due to the higher latency on DDR3.

long story short - DDR2 is ideal for you, dood.

[Deathlike2]

It would be appreciated to have links to benchmarks.

To be clear, for the generation I'm looking at, how much difference is DDR2-800 and DDR2-1066 with the non-i7 cores?

[I.S.T.]

It would be appreciated to have links to benchmarks.

To be clear, for the generation I'm looking at, how much difference is DDR2-800 and DDR2-1066 with the non-i7 cores?

None.

Here is why.

DDR2-800 is fast enough, with one stick, to supply all the bandwidth needs of a Core 2 based CPU with a FSB speed of 800 Mhz. a dual-channel set up of DDR2-800 will basically be the equivalent of DDR2-1600, which is enough for the highest end Core 2 Extreme quad-cores.

The 800 mhz speed translates to 6400 megs of bandwidth a second, exactly equal to what an 800 mhz FSB Core 2 duo needs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_2_duo ... ry_modules

The 1066 mhz modules would be the equivalent of the 1066 mhz FSB modules, and so forth.

Because of dual-channel capabilities, it's not really needed to go above DDR2-800 unless you want to OC or are concerned about running at the stock speeds for some reason(Say, if the cooling in your case sucks.).

I'd have gotten benchmarks, but I don't know where ot find them as they were run years ago... >.> I was sort of out of the loops for much of 2007 in this stuff.

[Deathlike2]

Referencing Wikipedia can only get more confusing... argh. Thanks anyways.

[I.S.T.]

*Shrug* The chart is pretty clear.

But as I said before, a dual-channel kit of DDR2-800, which i've linked you to, will be more than enough.

[Deathlike2]

If my math is still any good (probably not), wouldn't DDR2-667 (under dual channel) suffice while using the cores using the 1333MHz FSB?

[I.S.T.]

Yes. Not too much cheaper, but they have lower latency apparently: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820146112

Still, I don't think lower latency matters too much...

But, in the end, pick what ya want. 667, 800 and 1066 are all fine. I would personally go for 800 for processor upgrade safety if for some reason you need to replace the one you pick with a 1600 FSB CPU.

[Deathlike2]

Hmmm.. the mobo suggested doesn't have Firewire (although, I don't have any Firewire products)..

Aren't there other mobos on the market that have a 2-BIOS protection, or do you think that's overrated?

Also, what do you think about the limited lifetime warrenties? Good, bad or meh?