digerati
OSNN Addict
- Joined
- 21 Mar 2004
- Messages
- 62
I've recently made some upgrades to key parts of my system and am wondering if I would see any significant improvement from purchasing a PCI soundcard instead of just using my onboard sound?
I am going to be running an Athlon64 3000+ on a Chaintech vnf4 nforce4 ultra mobo with 512x2 geil pc3200 ram a radeon x800xl pcie vidcard and a seagate 120gb sata HD.
The system will mainly be used for gaming, mostly sports, MMOs and a few FPS's and I usually either use a pair of normal headphones or some creative 2.1 speakers. I'm no audiophile and dont plan on upgrading my headphones or speakers anytime soon but I've read that a separate soundcard can let you hear things onboard won't and it can improve performance by offloading work form the CPU to the soundcard.
Anyhow, I was just wondering if given my equipment and situation if it is worth it for me to get a separate card.
The ones I'm considering are:
Audigy 2 ZS - hear it's the best for gaming but i really got a bad taste in my mouth for creative due to past experiences with their cards and their drivers
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz - hear alot of good things, good price, but kind of old isnt it?
Chaintech av-710 - good price, good reviews, dont know much else about it
and in all honesty, i'm not really into spending the money for a 2 zs unless the benefit is pretty big. The Turtle Beach and Chaintech are more in my price range, would either of those have any appreciable improvement over the onboard sound?
Here's the info about the sound form the Chaintech website:
* Supports enhanced NVIDIA 7.1-channel audio
* Complies with AC'97 Rev 2.3 specifications
* Six audio jacks with automatic jack sensing
* Supports 48KHz coaxial S/PDIF output
* EAX/Direct Sound 3D/I3DL2/A3D compatible
I am going to be running an Athlon64 3000+ on a Chaintech vnf4 nforce4 ultra mobo with 512x2 geil pc3200 ram a radeon x800xl pcie vidcard and a seagate 120gb sata HD.
The system will mainly be used for gaming, mostly sports, MMOs and a few FPS's and I usually either use a pair of normal headphones or some creative 2.1 speakers. I'm no audiophile and dont plan on upgrading my headphones or speakers anytime soon but I've read that a separate soundcard can let you hear things onboard won't and it can improve performance by offloading work form the CPU to the soundcard.
Anyhow, I was just wondering if given my equipment and situation if it is worth it for me to get a separate card.
The ones I'm considering are:
Audigy 2 ZS - hear it's the best for gaming but i really got a bad taste in my mouth for creative due to past experiences with their cards and their drivers
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz - hear alot of good things, good price, but kind of old isnt it?
Chaintech av-710 - good price, good reviews, dont know much else about it
and in all honesty, i'm not really into spending the money for a 2 zs unless the benefit is pretty big. The Turtle Beach and Chaintech are more in my price range, would either of those have any appreciable improvement over the onboard sound?
Here's the info about the sound form the Chaintech website:
* Supports enhanced NVIDIA 7.1-channel audio
* Complies with AC'97 Rev 2.3 specifications
* Six audio jacks with automatic jack sensing
* Supports 48KHz coaxial S/PDIF output
* EAX/Direct Sound 3D/I3DL2/A3D compatible