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Santa Cruz or Audigy for Win 2k and KT133A?

S

smithpd

Member
I am about to install Windows 2000 sp2, and I need a new sound card because the Win 2k drivers for my Aureal SQ 2500 card are not supported, and Aureal is out of business.🙁 Based on reading many reviews, I had settled on the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz. However, I have read several reports of problems with the Santa Cruz and the game Thief (especially Thief 2 The Metal Age), including garbled sound and crashing of Thief 2. Evidently Thief has some unique problems with the Santa Cruz that do not appear with other games. So I am considering an Audigy instead, but I have not given up on Santa Cruz yet. All things being equal, I would prefer a product not made by Creative, but I will go with the Audigy if necessary.

My computer specs are:
Athlon 1.2 GHz
Asus A7V133 mobo (Via Apollo KT133A chipset)
GeForce 2 Pro
Aureal SQ 2500 (to be replaced with ??)
Win 98 (to be replaced with Win 2K)

These problems could have been fixed with recent drivers. So, I would like to ask whether anyone has had a 100% successful recent experience with either Santa Cruz or Audigy sound cards, under the following conditions: Win 2K sp2. KT133A chipset. Latest drivers from vendor site. No crashes or garbled sound and no pops. And, if you have it, experience with Thief would be great. I know that's asking a lot, so if you have any reasonable subset of the above, please let me hear from you.🙂

I would be also be pleased to hear about problems you have had with Santa Cruz and Audigy under Win 2k, but what I really want to know is how many successes are there compared to failures.
 
Both are nice sound cards--you really can't go wrong with either card. I believe that the Audigy is better for gaming while the Santa Cruz is better for virtual 5.1 and music. The cards seem identical in terms of sound quality in all other aspects.

So, it depends on how much $$ you were willing to spend on your sound card. Are you one of those totally unlucky bastards when it comes to your computer? If so, you might get bitten by the 686B bug... solution would be the Santa Cruz.
 
Thanks for your opinions, MasterHoss and Sundog.🙂
A little clarification would help me to understand how they relate to my situation:
Have you used the card with Win 2000? With a KT133A chipset? To play Thief?
 
I've had both in my machine that's almost the same rig.

athlon 1.2, a7v133, win2k, geforce2, and I've got to give it to the santa cruz.

It ran perfectly smooth, whereas the audigy runs very smooth.

small difference, but since it's hooked up to my $2k home theatre setup, anything but flawless playback pisses me off. The audigy has very very slight skips every once in a while.
 
Assuming that both cards are equal in terms of performance and quality (which they aren't), the Santa Cruz is a better choice to go with your system. The Audigy has a rare, but very bad problem of not working in 2k or XP at all, you are also using a via chipset, so I would stay away from creative for that reason. Also creative driver support has always sucked, and since you can't download drivers from them anymore, its worse.

As for quality the Santa Cruz is definitely better, but the audigy uses less cpu cycles. The SC used to have thief 2 problems, but the drivers have been corrected, I believe.
 


<< Thanks Huma! Now we are getting somewhere. All I need now is someone with Thief experience. Anyone? >>



Just for you (and since the forums were down anyway) I booted into XP and installed Thief with the assumption that the TB Santa Cruz drivers for 2K and XP are nearly identical. Everything went smoothly. No sound problems that I noticed. I have a 4-speaker setup, but I think that Thief really only uses stereo sound and maximizes positional audio cues.
 
Thanks a lot, Kgraeme.🙂 That gives me real hope. If you see this, please let me know, was it Thief 2? And did you try to switch on hardware acceleration and EAX? Those options seem to give at least one person I know some problems with greatly reduced sound levels.
 
Haha! You really should finish it, kgraeme, now that you have installed it. That will be a reward for your generosity. The zombies are really scary at first, but with experience they are one of the easiest AI to get around. They are slow and stupid, and if you keep you eyes open and look all around, you can avoid them just by running. More important, if you play the game in a stealthy mode, you can avoid disturbing most of the AI in the first place, and it becomes easier and more fun. Come to the Eidos Thief Forum if you have any questions.

OK, sorry for the OT pitch. Back to this topic.

kgraeme, did you try it with hardware audio acceleration or EAX swithed on? That is important.

The success of Thief 1 is good news, but it does not assure that there will be no problems. Has anyone tried the Santa Cruz with Thief 2 The Metal Age with Hardware acceleration and EAX turned on? If it doesn't act badly, you will be rewarded for your trouble.🙂
 
I had both, I went from an Santa Cruz to an Audigy and I can not notice a difference between the two. I will however recommend the Audigy just for the fact that it has a firewire port.
 


<< The Audigy has a rare, but very bad problem of not working in 2k or XP at all, you are also using a via chipset, so I would stay away from creative for that reason. >>



Using SB Audigy and WinXP in a VIA board with no problems,the threads that I`ve read on Audigy not working in 2k/XP had turned out to be faulty(dead) Audigy sound cards.

I have had no gaming or driver problems, as for which card is better well there`ve been threads where some say Audigy is better and others say Santa Cruz while the rest say they`re about the same,the bottom line is they both sound great.

Btw Santa Cruz was second on my shopping list,I decided to go for the Audigy and have been more then happy with it so far,even install setup was easy enough,I agree Creative are slow with updating their drivers and Santa Cruz in this department is tops.


🙂
 


<<
kgraeme, did you try it with hardware audio acceleration or EAX swithed on? That is important.
 >>



I don't remember seeing an EAX switch. From memory, I saw voices/channels? (turnedup to 12) and hardware acceleration (set to default I think, it was the only choice.) I'm not booted into XP right now so I can't check.
 


<<
Using SB Audigy and WinXP in a VIA board with no problems,the threads that I`ve read on Audigy not working in 2k/XP had turned out to be faulty(dead) Audigy sound cards. >>



Neither of your boards uses the 686B southbridge which is the source of problems with a SoundBlaster. If you had the 686B, you would likely be pushing the Santa Cruz as well.
 


<< Neither of your boards uses the 686B southbridge which is the source of problems with a SoundBlaster. If you had the 686B, you would likely be pushing the Santa Cruz as well. >>



The SBlive was the main card with the 686B problem not so much with the SB Audigy ,plus Bios updates for boards and latest 4 in 1 drivers solved most of the problem.As for the Santa Cruz nobody including myself is saying it`s a bad card,just plenty more fish in the sea to choose from so to speak 😉.
 
I downloaded the Thief2 demo. No problems there either. Except that I suck. But the sound seemed fine. I just played a little of the first level though.

KK266-R (KT133A)
WinXP
384MB ram
TB Santa Cruz
Radeon 64

Hardware accel and EAX both on.
 
Theyre both good cards. I bought a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz though after reading the Neoseeker Audiophile forums. All of the members there recommended I get the TBSC over the Audigy. If I played more games I might have bought the Audigy, but I listen to music more than I play games so that made the choice easier.
 
I've had both cards also. I agree that the Audigy is a better gaming card and the SC is the better choice if listening to music and .mp3's is more important to you. Not that the Audigy sound bad playing mind you, just that SC is slightly better.
 
another note since I run the same hardware as you:

the audigy will skip during web browsing if I have hardware acceleration all the way up. It takes tweaking to find a setting where it won't skip.

the more I think about it, the more it pisses me off. the only thing keeping it in my machine is the optical output using the hoontech add-on. If the Santa Cruz could output optical, I'd toss this thing out pretty fast.
kinda waiting for a new motherboard that won't have this issue with the sound now.

(and no, I can't use a converter, as I need optical direct from the source to prevent interference issues with electical spdif in my house).
 
kgraeme,

I hate to break it to you, because you have been so helpful, but the Thief 2 demo is not the same as Thief 2. LGS did something to "refine" their hardware interface between the time the demo and the real product were issued. As a result, lots of people complain that they ran the demo OK but were unsuccessful with Thief 2. So, the question still remains, has anyone actually run Thief 2 the SC, Win 2k, and a via chipset? Is anyone out there?

Thank you all for your input. I have had enough positive resonse that I am tempted to buy the SC anyway and hope for the best. I notice that there are recent Beta drivers for the SC under Win 2k. Maybe the issues, if there are any, have been corrected.
 
Thanks kgraeme!🙂 You won't regret it. If you ever need help with the game, come to the Eidos Thief Forum (link posted above). There are about 200 Fan-made missions out there, enough to keep you going for a couple of years.🙂
 
Oh, one other thing. When you install Thief 2 in Windows NT and its derivatives, use a special switch. At Start / Run, type

D:\setup.exe -lgntforce

where D: is your CDROM drive and, the first letter of "lgntforce" is an "L".
 
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