Pap3r

I ctually just looke din my old school dell, from a loong time ago, and found that it had a SoundBlaster LIVE! Card in it. I put it into my system, and was impressed to see it still worked. It installed automatically, and I disabled my P5Q's onboard audio. So here is my question(s)...

My P5Q, just a regular Asus P5Q, has onboard audio. The onboard audio is supposedly HD Onboard Audio, so I'm not sure if this card would even be considered an upgrade from that. The card is quite old, more than 4 years, I think, and I'm not aware how much Onboard device technology has changed. Do you think this is worth it? Or should I stick with the onboard? I figure the card is more powerful, but I'm asking just in case.

According to the Device Manager, it says "Creative SB Live! Value (WDM)" It also has a gameport integrated into it, not that I will be using that. I'm hoping the card is better than my onboard, as I would love to skip buying a card, and just grab some headphones.

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Q6600 G0 @ 3409
4600+ Manchester @ 2809.9

Member of the s939 Appreciation Club!

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eureka

It's probably pretty similar to your onboard, and it's not going to be taking any load off of the CPU. I'd say get a X-Fi Xtreme Music off of eBay for around £30.

ourfpshero

the live! card does take the load off the cpu- it has hardware acceleration. this was a big selling point when the live! came out in the days of pentium ones and twos. but- you need to upgrade the drivers for that. xp's built in drivers dont give hardware acceleration or eax support.

Pap3r

Well, I picked up an X-Fi Xtreme Audio card today, and it's great! I can definitely tell the difference! Now that I have a card, what cans should I get? I see the 555's are rather popular, but according to the reviews here, they are extremely noise-leaky. I don't mind outside noise so much, as the headphones I'm using (some Altec's that I got at BestBuy) allow me to hear my typing quite easily. I am somewhat worried about the leaking out of the headphones, though.

I'm not sure if I should sacrifice such precision sound direction with open backed, for quieter, most likely slightly better sound quality with closed backs. Does the open backed maked that much of a difference while gaming?

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Q6600 G0 @ 3409
4600+ Manchester @ 2809.9

Member of the s939 Appreciation Club!

Member of the LGC

Namrac

As a (very) generalized rule, open will give better soundstage/positioning, closed better bass.

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Audio Setup:
PC > TCA Gizmo > Ultralink Matrix 2s > AV123 ELT525Ms
OCN Headphone Club. Because computers don't suck up enough of my money.