Unixlord

I'm looking to purchase a decent discrete sound card. Initially the Asus Xonar DX seemed like the perfect choice. That was until I noticed the staggering number of games that have issues with it (Interesting since "just works" is part of their advertisements) and the fact that Asus are as lazy as creative when it comes to resolving issues and updating drivers. Even having Linux drivers is no subsitute for crappy gaming support so I've regretably turned away from Xonar sound cards.

It looks like I'm going to have to go with a creative X-FI card. Creative... Creative?! The scumbags that treat their customers like shit, delete thread about issue son their forums and cripple drivers for older cards? Yes that creative unfortunately. So anyway it looks like I'm going to have to pick either the Xtremegamer edtion or the Xtremegamer pro fatal1ty (douchebag) edition. If anyone owns one of the aforementioned cards or otherwise has any useful insight it will be greatly appreciated.

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Regeneration

Here are some news for you: Your onboard audio (SupremeFX II - ADI1988B) is excellent sound chip. I removed X-Fi and went with it instead, the sound quality is even better. Just make sure you're using the latest driver. Their Vista driver is even better then XP's.

I'm using ADI1988B on Vista x64 with the latest driver with BlackHawk addon (6.10.2.6480) and very happy with it.

Unixlord

Well the audio codec on my old M2N32 was Soundmax ADI1988B. I was extremely unsatisfied with it. The SupremeFX II is just a riser card to the onboard audio and the audio codec is once again ADI1988B too so unless there's something else going on I can't see how it can be any better.

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IQ, when aggregated, follows Ohm's law.

Regeneration

Use the Blackhawk addon - it improves it a lot.

Unixlord

That would be a good idea but I'm still on XP SP3 and if I'm not mistaken blackhawk is Vista only.

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IQ, when aggregated, follows Ohm's law.

screenager

how about a auzentech or a razer soundcard?

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Regeneration

Both Auzentech and Razer are based on the same audio chipset (C-Media) like Xonar.

Unixlord

Seems like there's no "right" or even bearable in the gaming soundcard market. Damn it!

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IQ, when aggregated, follows Ohm's law.

nCaine

Well i use HDA X-Mystique 7.1 , and i must admit that it hase superb audio quality , but also i must admit that i run into sound issues in games (rare actualy but yea).

But i got it for free , in NGO contest so ....

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Unixlord

With ADI 1988B try shooting an arrow at a tree in Oblvion at a medium/long range. Instead of the sound of an arrow penetrating the tree you'd get an odd noise that almost resembles a burst of static. In FEAR, enabling EAX would cause it do perform a wall occlusion effectn even when the source was in clear line of sight leading to confusion rather than helping. Games ported from consoles such as mass effect and assassin's creed and some that are cross platforrm such as bioshock also have a lot of problems. Oddly enough games like Stalker soc/cs, Crysis sound great and glitch free.

Anyways I just need to figure out whether the extra $50 is worth it for the X-FI xtremegamer pro. If the only difference is the X-RAM (and that's the only one I've found so far) then I'm getting the regular xtremegamer since the X-RAM is just a useless gimmick.

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IQ, when aggregated, follows Ohm's law.