Sound card decision

[Orbs]

I?m interested in using an AMD 5870 for an HTPC/gaming machine. Since I want to use the machine for both gaming and DVR/movies, I want both a great gaming sound card and uncompressed audio to my receiver when watching BluRay discs.

So let?s say I choose to buy a standard X-Fi for games and use the 5870 for bitstreaming TrueHD. Do I have to configure Windows to use a different audio device per application? Does the 5870 even show up as an audio device? How does Cyberlink know to send the BluRay audio to my video card instead of my sound card (or is there a pass through from sound card to video card or something)?

If anyone has tried this, I'd love to know how you did it, what components you used and how it's configured.

Thanks,
Jared

 

[jdjbuffalo]

Why would you get a crappy X-Fi card? The drivers suck and it's just an extra expense that could better be put to any other component. All the motherboard makers have included premium sound options on their motherboards for several years. Once you throw that in with a dual/quad-core processor you don't get any real benefit from having a dedicated sound card.

To answer your questions, yes you would specify a different audio output device in the application that way playing the BluRay movie.