Should I add an Audigy card to my system?

[Rike]

Current Sound: On board Realtek ALC850
Speakers: 2.0 POS that I rarely use.
Headphones: Sony MDR-V600 Headphones or Sennheiser PC150

1. System, 100% stable @ 24 hours of Prime95. Used mostly for gaming.
A64 3200+ (Winchester) @ 2540MHz
Asus AN8 SLI-Deluxe (1006 BIOS)
1 Gig Patriot PC3200 DDR

2. I already have the Audigy Card from an old system.

3. I'm concerned that Creative drivers might cause instabilities in an otherwise rock-solid system.

Feel free to add comments to any answer you make to the poll.

 

[jpeyton]

Maybe a $20 Chaintech AV-710 (VIA Envy24 HT-S) would be more your style?

Great card for music; above average for games; drivers are good too.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Are you connecting to a receiver? Then you might want a card that does dolby 5.1 encoding ("Dolby Live") instead of forcing you to use 6 analog plugs for surround like Creative does.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

If you have the card lying around, I'd say go ahead and stick it in.

 

[LED]

Do you have Firewire ?

 

[Green84061]

RUN RUN AWAY FROM THOSE V600's WHILE YOU STILL CAN, also i think a audigy is not needed for your setup.

 

[sigpop]

for some of the more complex games with nice audio, would the audigy it reduce cpu usage? or does the onboard sound chip do that?

 

[Rike]

Originally posted by: LED
Do you have Firewire ?

Yes, it's on the mobo.

 

[Rike]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Are you connecting to a receiver? Then you might want a card that does dolby 5.1 encoding ("Dolby Live") instead of forcing you to use 6 analog plugs for surround like Creative does.

Nope. I use headphones 98% of the time.

 

[JDCentral]

Mmm... Why did nVidia do away with SoundStorm?!

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: JDCentral
Mmm... Why did nVidia do away with SoundStorm?!

I don't know, it would have been a great feature for me.

I got one of the new DDL cards though and it's working quite well.

 

[Rike]

Originally posted by: Green84061
RUN RUN AWAY FROM THOSE V600's WHILE YOU STILL CAN, also i think a audigy is not needed for your setup.

Are you implying that the V600's are bad in some way? They've served me well for years and years. If I was buying today, I'd likely get something different, but I'm not throwing out good headphones. That would be silly.:Q

 

[Rike]

Originally posted by: JDCentral
Mmm... Why did nVidia do away with SoundStorm?!

Yeah, that was a bummer. I loved it on my old nForce2 system. Now my wife has that system and she dosen't even use sound most of the time.

Edit: Glad to see somebody finally neffed.

 

[Icepick]

Edit: never mind. Didn't realize you already had the card

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Rike, are you buying this card, or do you have it already (as I have understood you to say)?

 

[hans007]

i used to think onboard realteks were fine. but they do make a lot of popping and some hiss. i use primarily headphones so i notice.

i would put in the audigy if you had it. the only onboard i think that is decent enough to not really need an audigy is any of the azalia HD onboard. i've got a board with that and its sound quality is just like an audigy.

also an audigy will probably give you better framerate in games since it is less cpu dependant.

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Maybe a $20 Chaintech AV-710 (VIA Envy24 HT-S) would be more your style?

Great card for music; above average for games; drivers are good too.

excuse me, where do u get one for $20? I would like to know! thanks

 

[classy]

Even though the drivers can be a hassel, there is no better sound card out there, unless you go professional.

 

[Rike]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
Rike, are you buying this card, or do you have it already (as I have understood you to say)?

I already have it. I bought it about 2 1/2 years ago when Neverwinter Nights came out. It was in a P3 550, 128 MB Ram, with a GeForce256. It actually made a real difference in playability at the time.

I've never had any trouble with Creative drivers, but lots of people hear know more than I do, so I though I'd ask around and see what people thought.

 

[Rike]

Thanks to everyone who voted and/or posted a comment. It looks like the ayes have it, so I'll add it in soon and see what happens. Other comments/votes are still welcome.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Yes. Get it.

 

[SuperSix]

WHy? Is there something you don't like about the onboard audio? Do you think you will notice a difference? If so, out the Cre card in.. I don't care for their drivers either.

 

[Rike]

So I disabled onboard sound, uninstalled the old sound drivers, used DriverCleaner Pro, added the card in, installed current drivers, and . . . everything is working just fine. :thumbsup:

The sound is a bit different. I wouldn't say it's a lot better, but I have noticed that CS:Source sounds more "environmental." I'm not sure if that's me imagining it or what, since I thought Source didn't use any hardware processing for sound.

Any way, no harm has been done and some of the sound load is off the CPU, which is always good, even if it only makes a small difference. At least I didn't pay for it; it was money long since spent.

Thanks again to everyone who posted/voted. Even the neffers.