new soundcard choices

S

skinlab

Gawd
Joined
Dec 13, 2002
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965
i just got a new system all hooked up, but i dont want to use the onboard sound (p4p800-deluxe, i get some distortion sometimes, but thats probably because i changed mobo/cpu and chipset and didnt format, i just ran a sysprep for windows)

in any case, here are my options, and prices (in cdn dollars)

creative audigy2 (oem): $95
creative audigy2 zs (retail): $115
hercules game surround fortissimo 3 7.1 (retail): $85
hercules digifire 7.1 8 chan (retail): $119
m-audio revolution 7.1 (retail): $140

what im going to be using it for:

-gaming, and lots of it (bf1942+dc / cod / fifa,madden,nhl / etc...)
-music (mp3's mostly, i wont be sampling anything)

thats pretty much it, make the choice depending on sound quality/price ratio, disregard any firewire/usb or other hookups and/or front panels (i dont need those)

thanks.
 
Man, Soundcards are so EXPENSIVE.

My Abit NF7-S Could almost be considered a soundcard with an integrated motherboard!

Anyways, I'd go with the Fort III. That's just me. And if you ask why I'll say because i HATE Creative. But that's just me.
 
I have the fortissimo 3 and play alot of BF1942 and DC it works great. It also made my bass alot deeper then my onboard sound and no more stupid crackling sounds.
 
I hate crackling sounds, so your Fortissimo got rid of it? Nice. I think the thing that is making the crackling noises on my setup is the wireless PCI card I have. Ghetto or what.
 
Ive worked with creative boards for years, and since the SB LIVE! came out ive done nothing but hate them.

Whether its 5 bucks or 500, stay away from creative is my advice.
 
Originally posted by Wixard
Ive worked with creative boards for years, and since the SB LIVE! came out ive done nothing but hate them.

Whether its 5 bucks or 500, stay away from creative is my advice.
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Bad quality drivers?
 
It's kinda funny to see how many people hate Creative for absolutely no reason except they have a bad "rep". They couldn't be easier to install, and the quality and game compatibility is second to none. You could pick up an SBLive 5.1 ($33 USD) and it would work beautifully for everything you mentioned. I have the Fort III, and it's not a bad card, but isn't any better than anything in the Creative line.
 
Originally posted by djnes
It's kinda funny to see how many people hate Creative for absolutely no reason except they have a bad "rep". They couldn't be easier to install, and the quality and game compatibility is second to none. You could pick up an SBLive 5.1 ($33 USD) and it would work beautifully for everything you mentioned. I have the Fort III, and it's not a bad card, but isn't any better than anything in the Creative line.
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I tend to agree. I've not had any problems with any Creative products. In fact, I am still a Creative fan boy(for sound cards only, of course).
 
so we've got a few votes for creative, a few for the fort3... hmmm

ive got an audigy (1) in the other system, all crackles and no fun, until i installed the compaq drivers, then it worked fine.
i just need something that will perform well but not put a huge dent in my pocket....
 
Originally posted by skinlab
so we've got a few votes for creative, a few for the fort3... hmmm

ive got an audigy (1) in the other system, all crackles and no fun, until i installed the compaq drivers, then it worked fine.
i just need something that will perform well but not put a huge dent in my pocket....
Click to expand...

Go Newegg yourself an Audigy 2 ZS.
 
I can see it either way on Creative. On one hand, they've always produced great stuff, and yes, their drivers are memory hogs, but it's not that much trouble to disable the background apps. My only negative experience with Creative was when I bought an A1 and it wouldn't work with my old Gateway. Some compatibility issue with the Intel 810E chipset or just the Gateway motherboard made the computer eventually crash with a loud screech looping through the speakers - the infamous Screech of Death.

I have to say Creative's handling of this situation was less than dutiful - this was a well documented, and widely known problem by the time I got the card (silly me...), yet they'd done nothing to correct it.

My next card was a GTXP. I liked it, for what it was worth, but the build quality wasn't as solid as Creative's - the center channel would disappear infrequently, the drivers were notoriously hard to install / get functional.

Now I'm back to Creative, and loving it. Every company makes its mistakes. Live with it.
 
well ive actually pondered the zs, and might eventually get it

only thing is, i gotta grab some memory first caus im only running a single bank right now, so my 2.6c is crippled, i can only get it to perform at about half of what it should be at. so another 512 first (next week hopefully), then in a month's time the sound card, unless i get the crackling resolved here (maybe with a format).

so much to buy, so little cash......
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG,
Don't mean to jack the thread, but your problem sounds very very familiar, since the exact same thing is happening on my system (using a KT133A chipset). Did creative ever do ANYTHING to fix it? Or am I just screwed until I get a new system or non-creative audio card?
 
Unfortunately, no, and I remember that some of the AMD chipsets were the hardest hit (apparently me being an afflicted Intel boy was something of a rarity). Which card are you trying to use?
 
dude get a turtle beach santa cruz. never once have i had a problem with it. never ever any problems with drivers or anything. it's awesome. and i run all kindsa games and movies and mp3s and you name it.
 
Originally posted by Mexicorn
LstOfTheBrunnenG,
Don't mean to jack the thread, but your problem sounds very very familiar, since the exact same thing is happening on my system (using a KT133A chipset). Did creative ever do ANYTHING to fix it? Or am I just screwed until I get a new system or non-creative audio card?
Click to expand...

Do a search for VIA PCI latency patch by George Breese.

EDIT : http://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/

This should help some.
 
Thanks for the info TechHead, i'll look into this. Also, while I was seeing what I could do in BIOS, I tried flicking the PCI slot with my SB live card to "Legacy ISA"....it seemed as if the problem went away for a bit, but in the end it really didn't do anything. Is this option bad for my card, or does it even matter?
 
A little off topic, but I, for one, dislike Creative because I've had cards give me problems. I spent around $80 to $100 for a SBLive! card back then the MP3+ first came out, and while I enjoyed it for a little on Win98 and an Intel chipset, I've never had it work properly on any other configuration (Win2k/XP, any VIA chipset). My range of problems have ranged from the minor (no rear speaker support, EAX not working) to more major (CPU 100% usage from Devldr32.exe, blue screen crashes caused by Creative drivers). Since then I used onboard audio for a while, before finally trying again with an Audigy 2. It was good with the first configuration I put it in, but now, with my Gigabyte GA-K8VNXP, I can't get the rear speakers to work once again. Rather than let myself get frustrated, I'm currently using onboard sound. I really want to make use out of this $90 card, but I don't want to deal with the frustrations it may cause me, and for this reason, I'm not a happy Creative customer.
 
he who speaketh badly about Creative, yet recommendeth Fortissimo III, hath not seen the horror of Hercules' shitty drivers.

in all seriousness though, Hercules' drivers suck - at least for the fort 3. i tried to update them , but when uninstalling the drivers, it wouldn't actually remove all of them - just enough to bork the card. it would seem easy to fix this: you just reinstall the drivers over what you had before...not so. hercules made one of those whole installation/uninstallation driver packs, so if the drivers aren't completely installed, running the installer pack will instead start the uninstallation process, which will never work anyway, because it only worked halfway before. it errors out because it can't find some of the files, or completes, telling you it removed stuff that it actually didn't. i had to system restore to get the sound working again. combine that with the fact that the recording level slider bar for the microphone usually doesn't stay where you put it, and instead goes to the max, makes it incredibly frustrating if you are using something like teamspeak.
 
Originally posted by SpaceMonkeyAndy
he who speaketh badly about Creative, yet recommendeth Fortissimo III, hath not seen the horror of Hercules' shitty drivers.

in all seriousness though, Hercules' drivers suck - at least for the fort 3. i tried to update them , but when uninstalling the drivers, it wouldn't actually remove all of them - just enough to bork the card. it would seem easy to fix this: you just reinstall the drivers over what you had before...not so. hercules made one of those whole installation/uninstallation driver packs, so if the drivers aren't completely installed, running the installer pack will instead start the uninstallation process, which will never work anyway, because it only worked halfway before. it errors out because it can't find some of the files, or completes, telling you it removed stuff that it actually didn't. i had to system restore to get the sound working again. combine that with the fact that the recording level slider bar for the microphone usually doesn't stay where you put it, and instead goes to the max, makes it incredibly frustrating if you are using something like teamspeak.
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seems every card has an issue
is there not a card that just works flawlessly? (or near that at least)

m-audio revo 7.1 <-- how are the drivers on that?
 
I think its sometimes luck of the draw.. I love my Soundblaster Live 5.1 as it was such a major improvement over my onboard and it works flawlessly (I also enjoy the creative audio HQ software). My friend has a Digifire in one comp and a Fortissimo in another and so far, they sound great. My friend is also somewhat lacking in computer knowledge so he just installs all drivers overtop of each other, from Graphics card to sound. With that said, it seems to me that that its either user error or the drivers just dont like certain configurations.
 
Originally posted by SpaceMonkeyAndy
he who speaketh badly about Creative, yet recommendeth Fortissimo III, hath not seen the horror of Hercules' shitty drivers.

in all seriousness though, Hercules' drivers suck - at least for the fort 3. i tried to update them , but when uninstalling the drivers, it wouldn't actually remove all of them - just enough to bork the card. it would seem easy to fix this: you just reinstall the drivers over what you had before...not so. hercules made one of those whole installation/uninstallation driver packs, so if the drivers aren't completely installed, running the installer pack will instead start the uninstallation process, which will never work anyway, because it only worked halfway before. it errors out because it can't find some of the files, or completes, telling you it removed stuff that it actually didn't. i had to system restore to get the sound working again. combine that with the fact that the recording level slider bar for the microphone usually doesn't stay where you put it, and instead goes to the max, makes it incredibly frustrating if you are using something like teamspeak.
Click to expand...

I own a Fort 3 and have never had a problem installing and upgrading drivers. I've installed the card in both 98 and XP machines without a hitch at all. Not sure about that microphone deal, but havn't experienced any hiccups yet.
 
Originally posted by Mexicorn
Thanks for the info TechHead, i'll look into this. Also, while I was seeing what I could do in BIOS, I tried flicking the PCI slot with my SB live card to "Legacy ISA"....it seemed as if the problem went away for a bit, but in the end it really didn't do anything. Is this option bad for my card, or does it even matter?
Click to expand...

ISA Legacy device? I'd assume that's something to do with funkay IRQ settings or somesuch. Dunno,really, whatever works for you.

Oh, and get the PCI latency patch.. it should work.

Oh again, shorten your sig ,dude! 10 lines max.
 
Originally posted by djnes
It's kinda funny to see how many people hate Creative for absolutely no reason except they have a bad "rep". They couldn't be easier to install, and the quality and game compatibility is second to none. You could pick up an SBLive 5.1 ($33 USD) and it would work beautifully for everything you mentioned. I have the Fort III, and it's not a bad card, but isn't any better than anything in the Creative line.
Click to expand...
man i wish i could agree... ive had nothing but trouble with them. yet i have this affinty towards them

then again, i try to get more than i probably should
 
TechHead, THANK YOU SO MUCH! I can't even remember how long i've had this problem, probably years even (have had my comp at home during school so haven't had a chance to look into it much). Don't wanna jinx anything by saying my comp is fully cured, but so far i've had absolutely no sound crashes since I installed that PCI latency patch. THANKS AGAIN!!!
 
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