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Best Gaming Card

726 Views 13 Replies 12 Participants Last post by  The_Rocker, 
homestyle
1. So what is the best gaming sound card out now?

2. And what is the best sounding card out now (for movies, music, etc.)?
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L
The X-fi's are standard issue.
Creative has some competitors now.
Newegg.com will advertise most.
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C
Best for quality, probably this:

Quote:


Originally Posted by The_Rocker
View Post

This:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829132005

Or This:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829132010

Best bang-for-your-buck gaming:
X-Fi Xtreme music, $45 at Creative refurb
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N
X-fi Titanium (Fat4lity)
Asus Xonar

I like the Titanium Fat4lity, because it is $125 and comes with a free headset and also has an EMI(think that's what its called) shield on it
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G
If you use EAX in games, then the X-Fi titanium's are the way to go. Otherwise go for one of the Asus Xonar's which have slightly better sound quality, and emulated EAX.

As far as movies/music are concerned, the best sound quality you'll get would be to forget the sound card and use one of the digital outputs (SPDIF or optical) to link to an external receiver/amp/DAC.
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razr7
Asus Xonar DX2 7.1 it's the best for gaming!
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homestyle
I game only with Headphones and the EAX CMSS is great.

So a game has to have the EAX support for X-Fi to work. Are there any cards out that give me simulated surround on headphones without needing EAX?
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sgdude
x-fi fata1ty/titanium, i think the PCI versions>pci-e (I read something about this) their are super cheap on creative.com as refurbs, the highest end x-fi is like $80 there. W1N.
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Dolo001
Auzentech Xfi Forte awesome card also has a headphone amp not as good as The STX but @ 100 cheaper than the Stx you get the best of both worlds ie headphone amp and eax 5 .
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The_Rocker
If you are using Vista, your X-Fi has to emulate EAX via Alchemy anyway which sucks.

So, that means X-Fi's currently have no gaming advantage over any of the Xonars when being used in Vista.

ASUS has a much much more streamlines DS3DGX to do EAX direct sound emulation.
Creative has the crappy Alchemy to do the same job.

The sound quality of my ASUS Xonar STX is superior to that of my Auzen Prelude which I was using before hand. But unless you want to spend that much on a sound card then I reccomend the following:

ASUS Xonar DX
Creative X-Fi Extreme Music / Gamer
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I
whats the diff between the gamer and music X-Fi cards?

soundcards are forgein language to me, im good with everything else lol.
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W
I would say either this card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829271003 (best sound card I've owned but pricey) or an auzentech. Creative cards have pretty bad drivers and my xonar D1 did not sound too great (doesnt work w/ 750i so I lent to my friend).
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A
Razer Barracuda. Just because the headphones suck doesn't mean the sound card does too. It sounds great. But I second the Xonar Essence STX.
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The_Rocker
Quote:

Originally Posted by waverider599 View Post
I would say either this card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829271003 (best sound card I've owned but pricey) or an auzentech. Creative cards have pretty bad drivers and my xonar D1 did not sound too great (doesnt work w/ 750i so I lent to my friend).
Your xonar D1 should work if you use that registry fix I posted.

http://www.overclock.net/sound-cards...ml#post5656090

Ignore the PCI-E bit, it is a fix which controls the IRQL assignment of all PCI based devices.
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