Hmm you actually might be better off with a Creative X-Fi card. It supports higher version of EAX I believe. The latest is the Titanium PCIe. Just don't get the Titanium HD, it doesn't work in XP.

To experience the real power of this technology you should either have a 5.1 surround setup or use decent HiFi headphones and enable CMSS-3D in the driver. Games that shine are BF2142, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, Doom 3 and many others.

Not really willing to buy an X-Fi, although I might get one if the price is right in the future. It does indeed support a higher version of EAX.

I forgot about Doom 3 and Quake 4 completely! I should give those a try!

At least the PCI X-Fi cards should be available for little money.

However...

Avoid the X-Fi Xtreme Audio AT ALL COSTS.

It's not a "real" X-Fi and just a software codec solution. Many games also won't allow you tick / enable EAX with this card.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_EAX_support 😎
Though bizarrely there are games with no checks in any column....

I do know Condemned has EAX3/4 support. It has an EAX Advanced HD option.

^ This list is at least incomplete as I remember myself ticking the EAX checkbox on the Colin McRae Rally 04 menu 😉

half life
unreal tournament with the eax addons

Half Life does most effects in software. Unless you are using A3D 2.0.

And the UT EAX addons are buggy aren't they? I always had problems with the game's hardware 3d audio mode. Plus playing old EAX games on a card newer than Live can be problematic. Also the VXD drivers are sometimes needed for the results to be correct in old games.

Which also reminds me that I was playing Condemned the other day with my Audigy 2 via Alchemy. I run that old card in my 3570k + Win7 64 rig hehe. That was buggy. It probably needs XP and older drivers. Fun.

swaaye wrote:

I run that old card in my 3570k + Win7 64 rig hehe. That was buggy. It probably needs XP and older drivers. Fun.

this is exactly what I do (same CPU too) , its pretty odd to see that this 9 year old soundcard is still better than the onboard audio I have on the motherboard, even with just normal (albeit decent , Creative T10) 2 speakers, one can hear the difference. not a bad upgrade for something that cost £10

I would have used it in my Win98 machine, but Im not even sure if Win98 drivers exist for the Audigy2 ZS,

as for the question , one game I really like on the Audigy 2 is Doom 3 ,not necessarily the best game around but its not bad.

Darkman wrote:

this is exactly what I do (same CPU too) , its pretty odd to see that this 9 year old soundcard is still better than the onboard audio I have on the motherboard, even with just normal (albeit decent , Creative T10) 2 speakers, one can hear the difference. not a bad upgrade for something that cost £10

I would have used it in my Win98 machine, but Im not even sure if Win98 drivers exist for the Audigy2 ZS,

I had an X-Fi in the machine but the X-Fi does not like the PCI bridge used on my P8Z68 board and has nasty sound problems. Audigy 2 ZS works perfect. I really like the headphone + CMSS-3D mode on Audigy and X-Fi so that's the main motivation for me.

You can use Audigy 2 in 98SE but it is a pain because of how complicated the driver install is. You need the original CD, which will install WDM drivers for 98, but then you need to switch to the VXD drivers for games to work properly. It takes forever. Best to just use a Aureal card, though the Audigy headphone mode is much better than what Aureal had.

right now in my Win98 machine I have an SBlive (the X-gamer edition) , any advantages to using an Aureal card, particularly a Vortex 2 based one?

I would have to imagine the advantage of the SBlive would be compatibility, Ive seen more EAX options than A3D

Think that i was suprised by sound in Mafia (1) game, when i got mine Audigy 1. It was really different from integrated audio codec. But not sure about supported eax version.

Darkman wrote:

right now in my Win98 machine I have an SBlive (the X-gamer edition) , any advantages to using an Aureal card, particularly a Vortex 2 based one?

I would have to imagine the advantage of the SBlive would be compatibility, Ive seen more EAX options than A3D

There's no reason you can't swap sound cards for different games. There's a good balance of A3D and EAX games.