Basic sound card newbee question.

[Princeman]

I just got a Abit KD7-E for cheap and it needs a sound card. I have a PCI Aureal Vortex 2 (BA88DL30A-01, Vortex AU8830A2) A3D that was previously working on another board and got some drivers off the web, but the thing wants all the IRQ's and hangs my system. I tried to free some up but no luck after 2 hours of fooling around. Do all cheap sound cards want so many irq's? Is there a basic, cheap sound card out there that installs easily? Are the expensive sound cards any better? No fancy speaker set up, just a Logictech subwoofer and two little speakers that were FAR a while back. Still sounds pretty good though if I can get a sound card that works. Thanks

 

[Ryan]

Please use the general hardware forum for this type of post.

 

[Princeman]

Well, I reinstalled the Vortex and it works now, but it bumped out my usb controller. So I installed one of my $3 IOGEAR 2.0 USB PCI cards and plugged my usb things into that and the usb problem cleared. So I made an image of it all before it goes south again. Also I disabled the sb emulator mode and the Vortex game controller on the sound card. My sound is decent again. Any basic, good, cheap sound cards you can recommend?

 

[holdencommodore]

Well, there are plenty of options, just depends on how cheap you want to be ...

You could go with a dirt cheap C-media 8738 based card, which will give you surround sound, good drivers, and the card supports EAX1, EAX2, A3D 1, I3DLevel2 via Sensaura 3D API. Or if you are willing to spend more, you could go with a Hercules Fortissimo II or Fortissimo III.

Cheers

 

[JonnyB]

i use a soundblaster live value with no problems at all. i seem to recall it being pretty cheap too.