Getting a new computer, new trends - updated, need some help with RAM picking

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Most sound cards I find to be a waste of money; onboard sound has improved dramatically over the last 7 years. I would have some some of the money from the sound card and purchased a higher end CPU.

 

So has upgrade cards. My Audigy 4 card still sounds better than the sound board on my high-end Gigabyte mainboard.

 

The ICHR9?

 

That might be the problem; go Asus and purchase their high end motherboard with the attachable sound card. I have a similar setup with my Abit 939 Mobo and the sound is better than the sound blaster that I installed and sent because it wasn't worth the extra $75.

 

I have nothing against Asus mainbords. I've owned them in the past. But I would much rather stick with my Gigabyte. In fact now you've pointed out another good reason to have an upgrade card: One does not have to worry about choosing a mainboard based on its onboard sound, since it might add just about the same amount as an upgrade card would to the total cost anyway.

Btw, which sound chip is your Asus board using? Since many OEM's use the same on board sound chip anyway, I may be familiar with that particular unit.

I'm not sure if you are directing that at me. But yes, that is the south bridge chip on my mainboard. The audio is some version of Realtek's 7.1. It's not bad for onboard sound, but not quite as robust as my CL Audigy. The Audigy card is very dated at this point in time, since its already two years old. But it's still a 24 bit card. Now there are, of course, the X-FI cards that are better.

Edit: Actually, Merlanni, I think it might be ICHR8...since it's already been almost two years ago....

 

Yeah, I would have done the same, but my Audigy ES is from my previous computer, actually. It didn't cost me anything at this point. If I buy a new card now, it will be an X-Fi Titanium most probably, or maybe Extreme Gamer Fatal1ty Pro. However, I'd rather buy something else for my computer at the moment, if I really had to. My mobo is P5Q-E from Asus, so why not strictly high-end, it's not entry level, either. I'm disappointed with the obscurity of the overclocking options, though, and not sure if it can't be the reason why I'm getting poor results OC'ing this computer.

 

With the X-FI cards you get a much higher instruction rate than with the Audigy cards, which off-loads quite a bit of the instruction load from your main CPU. One of the drawbacks of onboard audio is that it is really software driven and does little off-loading from the CPU. Also, the X-FI has an upgraded sampling engine which resluts in lower distortion than with the Audigy cards.

 

But did vista not put a software emulation between the soundcard and the game??

 

The problem is that you need to avoid the X Fi Audio, and get at least either the X Fi Music or X Fi Gamer, as the X Fi Audio lacks the hardware needed to do things entirely in hardware.

Besides, given how Creative has been running their business, I cant recommend a Creative soundcard with any honesty. Rather, I'd get an Asus D2X, which sounds better and works better. No point in Sound Blasters anymore, Creative destroyed them.

 

Two things:

One: The D2X is a superb audio card, if you have $200.00 to spend for a sound card.

Two: I've heard the X-Fi Xtreme Gamer through a set of Klipsch speakers and it sounds pretty good to my ears: Low distortion and really nice mids to low end; a very sweet sounding card, IMHO.

 

The board I was using was an ABit AN8 board with a removable sound card; it performed and sounded better than any onboard card back in mid 2005. If I had the money to build my dream computer the mobo would be either FoxConn Destroyer or Asus Extreme X48 motherboard; both of those boards offer removable sound cards and performance wise are one of the better mobo on the market.

I decided to stick to the roots I know and went AMD. My recent purchase is not even at my door steps yet but it is a AMD Phenom 8450, and the motherboard is a FoxConn 780G. I know Intel leads AMD for performance but these two parts with 4GB of RAM cost me $230. I already posted this info in the tech forum about my upgrade.