Sound Card Suggestions

About to finally build a new comp. Any suggestions on sound cards from you freaks who can hear people fart from across the map?

Creative XFI extreme gamer
I've had one for 2 years now no problems, sounds great for everything I do on a pc.

http://www.hl2dm-university.com/forum/p ... sound+card
read through that post.

I currently own a X-Fi fatality with all the shit front panel and all its sitting in a box if that tells you anything but I will probably throw it on a spare computer. This card was given to me by my brother who was sick of its problems. And I used to own one with I returned to newegg for a refund as per the thread I linked you. I now own a Razer baracuda AC-1, I bought it for 60$ and for that price it is a good buy it sounds good and performs well though it has an annoying driver where the control panel pops up every time windows starts. However paying 150$ for a razer is not worth it. And the same is true of creatives x-fi line. Get the lowest end one like say extreme music. It has the same processor minus the gimmicky ram. All in all if I was choosing I would take some C-media based card like the barracuda. Luke also uses a C-Media based card they no longer make.

HL2 and CS:S use software sound so a sound card makes little difference although you may notice less hissing crackling it is in the games that use openAL and EAX that it makes a difference.

I have an extreme music and bought it for about £50 I could have bought the fatality pro shit but the only difference is the 64MB XRAM (which i dont play any games that support it) and the input output console which i dont need either still.
I never had problems with my card. You say you have problems fearsome but you fail to elaborate.

Try on eof these i hear they are good
http://www.auzentech.com/site/index.php

EEPROM corruption the computer cant recognize the card and the creative drivers wont let you force an install. Basically if you are unlucky and this happens you are completely screwed the solution is to keep taking the card out of the computer and putting it in over and over. Finally it starts working. But after paying good money for the card I should not have to do that. I do not know of any cases where this happens to other products but creative blames it on the mobo. Yet they are the only company who has this problem. Just like valve and crashes. Anyhow its not worth the risk to purchase one at the chance that this will happen and you will be stuck dealing with a card that some times works.

I have heard of that problem before creative are crap for drivers and support they only just released a new driver recently after 2 years.

Thats wierd you had so many problems with creative. I personally have 5 Pc's in my home and 2 at my place of business all using XFi for over 2 years and not one problem ever. I haven't had to do any research on it to see if others had the same problem as you did, but all 7 of my pc's are totally different builds (intel, amd, asus, gigabyte, abit, ect ect) so I think in general they must work pretty good. Granted the driver support hasn't been the best but then again the drivers I used were pretty solid from the get go.
When it comes to electronic hardware the chance of getting a bum part exist in all brands and lines so its not uncommon to hear of a problem here or there, in fact I have read of a few problems with the razers as well so it's a crap shoot no matter what you buy.

i use a Dynex 7.1-Channel PCI Sound Card
and i've heard many farts from across the map

soundblaster x-fi xtremegamer and x-fi xtreme audio are the exact same card but you just get a few shitty games with the xtremegamer card and have to pay way more.

go with the xtremeaudio, works great for me

soundblaster x-fi xtremegamer and x-fi xtreme audio are the exact same card but you just get a few shitty games with the xtremegamer card and have to pay way more.

go with the xtremeaudio, works great for me

Actually the xfi extreme gamer has EAX 3.0 support, the others do not. EAX is not anything to worry about in source games but it is in other games, and makes a big difference IMO.