Sound Card (I rtard)

[ceyko]

Yeah...I know, should be the basic of basics but I was curious if any hardware gurus had any answers...input.

New PC...

Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Processor Q6600 (2.4GHz)
8MB L2 Cache
1066MHz Front Side Bus
3GB RAM
ASUS P5N-E SLI Mainboard
1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT graphics card
Realtek ALC883 6-channel CODEC

...I realize this thing is not state of the art, but trust me it is round about 6x better then my current "Gaming" rig.

Questions -
1. How much resources does an on-board sound card take vs a PCI based sound card?

2. What is the current best bang for the buck sound card? I want 5.1, but I don't need THX certification. Is it stil the best priced Sound Blaster card you can find? I usually have headphones on, but do occasionally use standard 2.1 computer speakers. I want the option of 5.1 "surround sound" just incase. However, I'm not too concerned about optical, hdmi, and/or component audio stuff.

3. I had an Audigy 2 that seemed fine, any advantages to the new model cards?

I'll be running XP Pro on this PC for now, as I'm....not thrilled about using Vista quite yet. :)

Take care,

[Kenny_Stang]

The Audigy 2 should be fine for what you need... I wouldn't bother upgrading the soundcard as long as you have something other than onboard audio. Now if it was an HTPC connected to your Home Theater, then I would upgrade, but for what you say you will be using it with it would be a waste of money to upgrade.

[5.0_CJ]

[QUOTE=ceyko]Yeah...I know, should be the basic of basics but I was curious if any hardware gurus had any answers...input.

New PC...

Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Processor Q6600 (2.4GHz)
8MB L2 Cache
1066MHz Front Side Bus
3GB RAM
ASUS P5N-E SLI Mainboard
1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GT graphics card
Realtek ALC883 6-channel CODEC

...I realize this thing is not state of the art, but trust me it is round about 6x better then my current "Gaming" rig.

Questions -
1. How much resources does an on-board sound card take vs a PCI based sound card?

2. What is the current best bang for the buck sound card? I want 5.1, but I don't need THX certification. Is it stil the best priced Sound Blaster card you can find? I usually have headphones on, but do occasionally use standard 2.1 computer speakers. I want the option of 5.1 "surround sound" just incase. However, I'm not too concerned about optical, hdmi, and/or component audio stuff.

3. I had an Audigy 2 that seemed fine, any advantages to the new model cards?

I'll be running XP Pro on this PC for now, as I'm....not thrilled about using Vista quite yet. :)

Take care,[/QUOTE]


your onboard auto is fine, a separate card will sound better (I thought it wouldnt then I threw in an old audigy and it was certainly better) but you will be fine, I run onboard audio because I'm lazy. Audigy 2 will be better than any codec.

You should run vista, if you buy XP you're wasting your money. DirectX 10 only works on Vista, and yes games look better. I run Vista64, service pack 1 is out and has fixed all the issues I griped about. People that trash talk vista all have one thing in common, they've never run it. Vista is a better operating system, and you will regret not going with it. Your system is fast, it's by no means a slouch. you list 3GB of ram? You need either 2048 or 4096 to run the ram in dual channel mode, 3GB is not a good idea. I highly recommend you get 2 2048mb sticks. Having more than 2 DIMMs in your system can (and will) cause power/instability issues, especially if you overclock. With today's games, there is a big difference between 2GB and 4GB when it comes to performance, and especially if you run Vista.

[ceyko]

I may dual boot the machine for awhile until I get used to Vista. All my customers are starting to have Vista machines, so I might as well TRY to cooperate with the rest of the IT industry.

There is 3Gb of RAM in it at the moment..

2x 1Gb and 2x 512Mb - I'm not opposed to putting 2x 1Gb sticks in it, just to be safe.

I appreciate the input from both of ya.