Sound card without the bling

[omek]

Hi atforums,
Looking for a basic sound card that will essentially take some load off the CPU and work with Windows 7. Had a Audigy SE that just blew up that worked well for years and was able to process at 96KHZ. I'm now on my motherboard's VIA audio. It sounds good but I'd rather free up a few CPU cycles if I could.

I've been looking at this card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829111002
-If anyone has this, how is the sound and how is the compatability with Win 7.
-Does anyone have a card that works well? Low hiss and high quality.

It doesn't have to be incredible with tons of options, just a non hissy card with it's own processing ability.
I should mention I have a 2.1 Creative audio speaker system.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

considering Microsoft took out hardware accelerated sound starting with Windows Vista, you're not going to save CPU cycles with a new sound card.

that's not to say there is no longer a reason to have a sound card as they can vastly improve upon audio quality relative to onboard as well as provide features onboard sound simply does not have

 

[f4phantom2500]

considering Microsoft took out hardware accelerated sound starting with Windows Vista, you're not going to save CPU cycles with a new sound card.

that's not to say there is no longer a reason to have a sound card as they can vastly improve upon audio quality relative to onboard as well as provide features onboard sound simply does not have

if anyone else wants further info on this:

http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/437770/windows-vista-7-and-hardware-acceleration

regarding cpu cycles, even if having a sound card would take some load off of the cpu, i'm pretty sure that modern multi-core cpus are powerful enough that the effects would be negligible.

so, as bunnyfubbles said, the only reasons to buy a sound card is if you aren't satisfied with the sound quality of onboard audio, and to have the feature support of a sound card (eax, etc).

 

[omek]

Kinda what I figured. The onboard sounds good enough to me, even though I do wish an addon card would process the sound (as it should) and free up an fps or two.
My case will get a bit more airflow anyhow.

 

[motsm]

considering Microsoft took out hardware accelerated sound starting with Windows Vista, you're not going to save CPU cycles with a new sound card.

That's not really true. They just removed Direct Sound, but OpenAL remains as a hardware sound API. Of course the games that actually take advantage of hardware sound is continuously shrinking.

 

[f4phantom2500]

Kinda what I figured. The onboard sounds good enough to me, even though I do wish an addon card would process the sound (as it should) and free up an fps or two.
My case will get a bit more airflow anyhow.

well hey don't get too down about it, think about it like this...the money that you were going to spend on a sound card could go toward a video card upgrade instead!

 

[Xenon14]

I got the Asus Xonar DG a few weeks ago... $29. Paired with Klipsch ProMedia 2.1. Really impressed with it. You should check it out.