The Death of the Sound Card?

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 6:58 pm

Nice short trip through memory lane. Who remembers the Adlib sound card?

He has a point that onboard audio has gotten very good now, especially on gamer class mobos.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1 ... 867,00.asp

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 7:26 pm

I remember. That was before the Sound Blaster came on the scene.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:10 pm

Yeah. All it did was Midi. Beeps & boops. But WOW was that an improvement over nothing.

Shadow250 · Post by **Shadow250** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 11:13 pm

lol i still have one in a box somewhere.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Tue Jan 22, 2008 11:30 pm

Heh, I don't even bother with them anymore. The only time I have had use for them was for use in a PC with no sound, or the onboard had went. With what we have now, there is not much point. I mean, if you wanted to squeeze a few cycles from your processor a dedicated would serve its purpose, but now adays, we got more than enough power to do the job.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 8:55 am

The only game I noticed that really benefited from my Sound Blaster X-Fi card was Bioshock. I was using a decent pair of USB headphones (whci hhave their own built-in sound card) which played everything else just fine. However Bioshock sounded like crap on them. Whole audio tracks would be missing (for example you'd hear half the conversation between two NPCs).

GuardianAsher · Post by **GuardianAsher** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 9:44 am

I swear by my X-Fi Fatal1ty Extreme Gamer. Not because of game support, but because of audio quality. Comparing my built in Realtek chip to the Sound Blaster, there's no comparison. Pair it up with a good pair of headphones, or a nice speaker system, and it's the best.

But then again, my motherboard is by far no gamer's motherboard. A simple Abit AN52 that I picked mostly because it had all of the ports, connectors, and layout that I wanted.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Wed Jan 23, 2008 10:14 am

Expensive card the X-Fi Fatal1ty Extreme Gamer - ~ $150. I've been using the built in sound with my new motherboard, and I've had some lockups where the sound stays in a loop. The only solution is a hard reset to restart the pc. I'm pretty sure it's the sound drivers since this motherboard is less than a year old.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 12:59 am

I have to agree with GuardianAsher on this one. I just did a comparison 3 days ago in fact. The Realtek's audio is pretty bad both on music & on games (real bad on games). I really did think that there wouldn't be much of a difference, but there is a thread @ TheTechReport that they were arguing about & at first I said that a good mobo with optical out should be just fine. However, not one to just say things without trying them, I threw in a Soundblaster Live that I haven't used in years & was amazed at the difference in music. It was also better in games. Then I tried a USB Audigy2 NX that I haven't ever had a chance to use & was amazed even more by the quality in games. Most noticable were the crisp high frequencies that appeared out of nowhere in games & music. Now, I haven't used Vista yet, so maybe they have managed to squeeze a lot out of it, but I'm no longer convinced. I still have my Audigy2 hooked up despite the currently wasted built in audio on my mobo. Top that off by the fact that there are actually ways to improve the sound on the Soundblasters

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f46/hotrodding-x-fi-laymans-guide-no-56k-226975/

& I'm thinking I'll be sticking with the add-on for a while (though I will say that the X-FI's don't seem to add anything to the sound quality side of things, so I'm sure a cheapie SB Live would do most just fine.

I've been having lockups with the sound too recently (with BF2142)... until I switched to the Audigy2. Think it may be a driver issue, but the most recent release straight from Realtek didn't help any.

tunis5000 · Post by **tunis5000** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 4:54 pm

dedicated sound cards also reduce the load on the CPU...

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 6:44 pm

heh lol, already mentioned that up there

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:08 pm

You can get the Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Xtreme Audio 24BIT Sound Card 7.1 PCI for around $50. It has Dolby 7.1 and DTS decoding built into it plus CMSS-3D and the 24 bit Crystalizer. Here is a good demo from Creative:

http://www.x-fi.com/whatis/

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:45 pm

The Xtreme Audio versons actually used the CPU to do the processing & only do some basic side processing. From what I know (though not experienced), they are similar to just using the built in audio.

NubyCanuby_OFC · Post by **NubyCanuby_OFC** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 1:15 am

I was wondering why the circuit board looked smaller then the X-Fi Xtreme Gamer and X-Fi Extreme Music which I've got. I think the Xtreme Audio still has the X-Fi processor so it would be good for a music card but not gaming.

Evolution of Sound Blaster Processing Power*

<table bgcolor="#aaaaaa" border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1" width="100%"><thead style="font-weight: bold;" bgcolor="#132648"> <tr valign="top"> <td align="center">

</td> <td align="center" width="70">Raw Data Path MIPs
Note 1</td> <td align="center">Typical
Processor MIPs
Note 2</td> <td align="center">Internal Audio
Channels Available</td> <td align="center">Overall Audio Sample Rate & Effects Processing MIPS vs Live!</td> <td align="center">No. of Simultaneous Real-time Effects</td> <td align="center">No. of Transistors</td> </tr> </thead> <tbody bgcolor="#132648"> <tr> <td align="left">Sound Blaster Pro</td> <td align="center">≈1</td> <td align="center">3+</td> <td align="center">-</td> <td align="center">0.0001x</td> <td align="center">-</td> <td align="center">100K</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left">AWE 32 (EMU8000)</td> <td align="center">67</td> <td align="center">200+</td> <td align="center">-</td> <td align="center">0.2x</td> <td align="center">-</td> <td align="center">500K</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left">Live! (10k1)</td> <td align="center">335</td> <td align="center">1,000+</td> <td align="center">16
(to Effects Engine)</td> <td align="center">1x</td> <td align="center">1</td> <td align="center">2M</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left">Audigy (10k2)</td> <td align="center">424</td> <td align="center">1,250+
Note 3</td> <td align="center">64
(to Effects Engine)</td> <td align="center">4x</td> <td align="center">4
Note 3</td> <td align="center">4.6M</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="left">X-Fi</td> <td align="center">10340</td> <td align="center">30,000+</td> <td align="center">4,096
(to all Processing Elements)</td> <td align="center">67x
Note 3</td> <td align="center">8
Note 4</td> <td align="center">51.1M</td></tr></tbody></table>

GuardianAsher · Post by **GuardianAsher** » Fri Jan 25, 2008 9:16 pm

Wow... that really puts things into perspective. Basically my sound card usage went through onboard realtek, Sound Blaster Live, Sound Blaster Audigy SE, onboard realtek HD, then my X-Fi... and all I have to say is WOW. In all honesty, I wasn't going to buy one. Then the CompUSA in town started closing, and they were selling stuff cheap, so I got it for christmas, for like $100 instead of the $150 plus. Glad I did now