Good Sound Card for gaming these days....

[JKILLA74]

Guys I need help... I have had the soundblaster fatality card for years. I wanted to upgrade to a better card but there are a million out there. I basically game with my pc and watch blue rays occasionally.I have a 5.1 klipsh surround sound system as well.

[kujoe2002]

Whats your price range. I would say use the ASUS Xonar, Creative SB Titanium or M-Audio (not the best for gaming, more for music production)

[PCVSNotebook]

Creative Sound Blaster ZxR , Hands down.

[ImaNihilist]

Integrated sound cards are pretty much equal to dedicated cards at this point in terms of gaming capabilities, no so much in terms of I/O. If you don't have fancy I/O needs there is no reason for a dedicated card.

[PCVSNotebook]

Integrated sound cards are pretty much equal to dedicated cards at this point in terms of gaming capabilities, no so much in terms of I/O. If you don't have fancy I/O needs there is no reason for a dedicated card.

Not if you are using expensive headphones , and want somthing to offer you 124dB !!!

[Wurm]

Not if you are using expensive headphones , and want somthing to offer you 124dB !!!

That is the volume control knob you are looking for...

Most recent onboard cards are really good for gaming (and most everything else) now; not like they were a few years ago.

JKILLA, what Mobo do you have?

[PCVSNotebook]

That is the volume control knob you are looking for...

Most recent onboard cards are really good for gaming (and most everything else) now; not like they were a few years ago.

JKILLA, what Mobo do you have?

wrong !

see this to learn somthing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iueTVM3xfFM

and today Creative ZXR is the best

specs

http://www.soundblaster.com/products...aster-zxr.aspx

124dB Signal-To-Noise Ratio
A signal to noise ratio or SNR of 124dB means your audio will be > 99.99% pristine audio which is more than 89.1 times better than the average sound cards.

Review :

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/gadge...nd-blaster-zxr


Edit : (you dont know what you are missing )

[Wurm]

I really don't care, you know why? Because to listen to music, I have a (really) nice sound system.

He asked about gaming. The new onboard cards do it well. My onboard card even supports THX TruStudio-Pro.

Also he has normal PC-centric 5.1 speakers, to get full use out of that card you listed he would need to upgrade them as well.

*edit* PCV you tend to be "fan-boyish" about the hardware you have, not everyone does or should agree with you.

And BTW there was nothing "wrong" about my post.

*edit 2* And I seriously doubt you have anything to teach me.

[PCVSNotebook]

I really don't care, you know why? Because to listen to music, I have a (really) nice sound system.

He asked about gaming. The new onboard cards do it well. My onboard card even supports THX TruStudio-Pro.

Also he has normal PC-centric 5.1 speakers, to get full use out of that card you listed he would need to upgrade them as well.

*edit* PCV you tend to be "fan-boyish" about the hardware you have, not everyone does or should agree with you.

And BTW there was nothing "wrong" about my post.

*edit 2* And I seriously doubt you have anything to teach me.

when you mock people insulting their brain and say "That is the volume control knob you are looking for."

expect to get replies like mine. and I was very polite I just said to you that you were wrong.

and as it seems you thought it was about Volume control knob ... the 124dB SNR ...

well surprise you did learn something from me .

the Same Volume control Knob will give you different results with a normal 100db card vs 124DB card ...

and as it seems you did not even know that each 3 DB more means double the sound quality as explained in the movie and the quote I posted.

surprise again , you should be thankful

and it is not about music only ... it is about the better sound quality .. the digital to Analog converting and output.

and Games have music too I guess.

hint : dont shout.

[Wurm]

when you mock people insulting their brain and say "That is the volume control knob you are looking for."

expect to get replies like mine. and I was very polite I just said to you that you were wrong.

and as it seems you thought it was about Volume control knob ... the 124dB SNR ...

well surprise you did learn something from me .

the Same Volume control Knob will give you different results with a normal 100db card vs 124DB card ...

and as it seems you did not even know that each 3 DB more means double the sound quality as explained in the movie and the quote I posted.

surprise again , you should be thankful

and it is not about music only ... it is about the better sound quality .. the digital to Analog converting and output.

and Games have music too I guess.

hint : dont shout.

It was a joke. pretty sad you took it personal, like I said fan-boyish.

I know all about Creative, spent hundreds of dollars on their good hardware paired with so-so drivers and software for many years.

And you know what, the onboard cards have caught up so well, that for gaming, you can do everything with them that you can do with that high priced card you love so much.

*edit* And you still haven't posted anything I didn't already know.

[ImaNihilist]

when you mock people insulting their brain and say "That is the volume control knob you are looking for."

expect to get replies like mine. and I was very polite I just said to you that you were wrong.

and as it seems you thought it was about Volume control knob ... the 124dB SNR ...

well surprise you did learn something from me .

the Same Volume control Knob will give you different results with a normal 100db card vs 124DB card ...

and as it seems you did not even know that each 3 DB more means double the sound quality as explained in the movie and the quote I posted.

surprise again , you should be thankful

and it is not about music only ... it is about the better sound quality .. the digital to Analog converting and output.

and Games have music too I guess.

hint : dont shout.

Sound quality doesn't quite work the way you think it does. It's not like a spec sheet suddenly means "more quality". For games it really doesn't matter, since there isn't anything recorded in super high quality.

Sound cards for gaming don't really serve a purpose anymore. It was never really about quality anyway. It was about surround sound and offloading processing from the CPU. In the era of multi-core CPUs it no longer matters.

[PCVSNotebook]

It was a joke. pretty sad you took it personal, like I said fan-boyish.

I know all about Creative, spent hundreds of dollars on their good hardware paired with so-so drivers and software for many years.

And you know what, the onboard cards have caught up so well, that for gaming, you can do everything with them that you can do with that high priced card you love so much.

*edit* And you still haven't posted anything I didn't already know.

LOL ... did you really know every 3 DB more you get double sound quality ? come onnnnnnnn I know you are an old timer but still you can miss a thing here and a thing there ..

oh and you are wrong about Creative , Asus Xonar cards took the lead for about 3 years , untill the ZXR was released when Creative took the lead back ..

btw , how much do you pay for each speaker ? Reciever ? Amplifier ? etc , for your sound system ?

[PCVSNotebook]

Sound quality doesn't quite work the way you think it does. It's not like a spec sheet suddenly means "more quality". For games it really doesn't matter, since there isn't anything recorded in super high quality.

Sound cards for gaming don't really serve a purpose anymore. It was never really about quality anyway. It was about surround sound and offloading processing from the CPU. In the era of multi-core CPUs it no longer matters.

I dont need to be a sound Engineer to judge . My ears tell me .. let your ears be the judge , dont go into much technical explanations every where .. when it comes to sound quality , your ears are the judge.

I know you are using Mac now and Cant test it . but if you test High end Sound cards today VS onboard sound ,you will hear the difference.

some High end motherboards started adding 118DB SNR and 600ohms amplifier and shielding to their onboard sound chip , even gold plated i/o as well , like the Sniper motherboard from Gigabyte and the supreme FX from Asus but those are $300+ motherboards .

[ImaNihilist]

I dont need to be a sound Engineer to judge . My ears tell me .. let your ears be the judge , dont go into much technical explanations every where .. when it comes to sound quality , your ears are the judge.

I know you are using Mac now and Cant test it . but if you test High end Sound cards today VS onboard sound ,you will hear the difference.

some High end motherboards started adding 118DB SNR and 600ohms amplifier and shielding to their onboard sound chip , even gold plated i/o as well , like the Sniper motherboard from Gigabyte and the supreme FX from Asus but those are $300+ motherboards .

There is no difference. We are talking about video games. The soundtracks are 256Kbps VBR on a good day. The sound effects are just sound effects. The sound of a sniper rifle isn't going to sound any different.

It's a wonder that Creative is still making sound cards. A of SNR 124dB is pretty irrelevant as a statistics. The Sound Blaster brand is a joke designed to sell a dead product to chumps. For a while it still made sense after the dedicated sound card was made redundant, because the I/O was still useful… but now there are better I/O solutions as well. Almost all I/O has gone external. They started putting things like an amp on the sound card because they had to find someway to continue to sell a 5 year old worthless product.

[Timman_24]

I bet PCV has silver cables as well.

Better get some of these or you might lose 0.00001% sound quality! http://www.aspenaudio.com/Merchant2/...uct_Code=GA470

Ima is right. Most games encode their audio to low bitrate. I know the "standard" for most iOS apps is 64Kbps... Games are around 128-256Kbps. No amount of tube amp, gold connector, blah blah will make that sound better.