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GFF is a community of gaming and music enthusiasts. We have a team of dedicated moderators, constant member-organized activities, and plenty of custom features, including our unique journal system. If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ or our GFWiki. You will have to register before you can post. Membership is completely free (and gets rid of the pesky advertisement unit underneath this message).
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 Member 17840 Level 9.35 Jan 2007 
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I don't think that Creative has worked any new (gaming-related) features into their sound cards since the bloody Sound Blaster Live. Add-in sound cards are pretty much useless nowadays, especially if you're running Vista, which apparently insists on doing all of its sound mixing in software. Add to that the fact that Creative Labs has quite possibly the worst QA and drivers in the entire computing industry, and it's hard to make a case for buying a new sound card unless your onboard sound blew up or something.
Granted, a new sound card will give you a boost in sound quality over integrated sound, but unless you have pretty good headphones or speakers, it's unlikely that you'll be able to tell the difference. Jam it back in, in the dark. |
Member 17840 Level 9.35 Jan 2007
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I suppose I could be a bit clearer on Vista's sound support; games that use OpenAL should still support hardware acceleration. All of my other points still stand, though, and the majority of games use DirectSound/DS3D anyways. :\ Moreover, PCI X-Fi cards apparently have all sorts of trouble with Vista and newer motherboards. While there is a PCI-Express X-Fi variant...Creative apparently doesn't supply end-user support for it.
 Dan (of Dan's Data infamy) sums up my views on Creative's cards better than I can, frankly. Creative claims to be working on a driver that will wrap DirectSound calls to OpenAL ones, which will enable sound acceleration on Vista. It's not out yet, and, given the company's habit of releasing horrid drivers and breaking lofty promises, I would definitely wait and see. There's nowhere I can't reach. |
Member 17840 Level 9.35 Jan 2007
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Yay, onboard audio has improved a ton since the days of the AWE32. Which, incidentally, was probably the best thing Creative Labs ever made (that goes in triplicate if you rate hardware by its size), but I digress. Geez, the chip on my ASUS P5K has 8 channel output, 96KHz output, DSP processing (probably done in software, mind you), and a noise floor that's pretty much inaudible. Hell, that's almost equal to the Gravis Ultrasound!
[sidetrack]I have no less than THREE AWE32 cards for some reason. Yes, they really are more than a foot long. Stupid new computers not having ISA slots, cos' I really wouldn't mind having a real FM synthesizer instead of DOSBox/Adplug's emulation. [/sidetrack] This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.
Last edited by Adol; Nov 9, 2007 at 02:00 AM.
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Adol