(A little offtopic) Snover. Do you know by chance some URL where those on-board cards are reviewed? I mean, some sort of comparison chart, because I know everyone of them is different and newer nVIDIA based boards have on-board audio that is supposed not to be too bad. Good day.

The Asus A7N8X-E is the pinnacle of All Socket A Motherboards, the final iteration of nForce2 chipsets. Considering how long the A7N8X lines have been out, and how stable the nForce 5.10 drivers are, I'd like to hear more about your roommates quirk...

For ~$126.69 after shipping you could have had 200gb
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp … -148-033&depa=0

Since I have a AV Reciever (every computer/game/movie enthusiast should) the best sound is a card with a good DSP and digital out that supports DTS.

For those who think no one give Creative a run for its money have never heard of M-Audio. Far superior sound to that of any of Creative's products. Cheaper to boot. For high quality on the cheap for you consumers check it...
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revolut … on71-focus.html
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp … -121-101&depa=0

Those also have a line of professional products... Now there is a word that can't be used in the same sentence as Creative Labs without generatiing laughter.

I'm getting one of these. 36bit dsp, 24bit/192khz, and S/PDIF with DTS pass through, and ... 64bit drivers!!!! =D
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audioph … le192-main.html

There's a plethora of pro cards that rain feces down upon Creative's offerings, but this card hits Creative over the head with a shovel and chops the body up with a chainsaw
http://www.esi-pro.com/viewProduct.php?pid=43&page=1

I mean... look at them

http://images10.newegg.com/productimage/29-102-164-03.JPG
http://www.esi-pro.com/upload/product/J-1B.jpg

It's like comparing some divine being to some homeless heroin addict beating his meat in an alley like it owes him money.

I don't think being any more explicit on my opinion of Creative Labs is.

And for those who are really serious about sound, you'll want some speakers that aren't made of plastic. I am all about making my own, and I can tell you, for the price, nothing beats these for the most bang for your buck
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?& … tnumber=300-640

and shielded versions too, so you can put them right next to your CRT (because lcd and plasma have nothing on a good ol computer crt for image quality)
http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?& … tnumber=300-642

The dreamy system of AV Processor and Amp of course would be a lexicon MC12b, and 4 Crown Studio Reference 1's. But for those who don't have $75k, there is the Denon 3805 Reciever ($890)
http://www.mydigitaluniverse.com/show.asp?PID=2619
and in silver
http://www.mydigitaluniverse.com/show.asp?PID=2769

One of those with 3 pairs of BR-1s connected to your PC with a S/PDIF or ToSlink will probably create a more immerserve enjoyable experience than your local theatre. And you can justify the cost because you'll own this stuff for years. Can you say that about some plastic pc squeakers connected some Creative SB pos?

And a sub to rule them all... build one of these and you can be sure that your neighbors will hate you. Unless you can afford the Krell reference sub with 2 15" and a 1" thick aluminum housing, these are the best...
http://www.partsexpress.com/webpage.cfm?webpa … ectGroup_ID=536

BTW, I'm an audiophile. Sorry for rambling.

Why do I continue to use Creative Labs cards?
One retarded acronym: EAX.
EAX3 and EAX4 are only supported by Creative Labs Audigy cards. Believe it or not, these environmental effects do make a HUGE difference in the immersiveness of games. I would love nothing more to get an M-Audio card, but those two damn things are keeping it from me.
For reference, I've got Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 Ultras.

... onboard audio ... has no dedicated processor and offloads ... its functions to the CPU

Actually last time I checked, one of the major disadvantages of many non-Creative add-on cards is that they make the CPU do a lot more work than mdoern Creative cards do.

But back to on-board sound: I just found an in-depth review of the sound hardware on the nForce 1 and 2: http://www.3dss.com/reviews/nForce/nForce.html

I haven't read much of it yet (lots of good stuff on page 2!), but it looks like it supports all sorts of hardware-accelerated stuff. Apparently the "SoundStorm" is nVidia's equivalent of the dedicated hardware processor you mentioned.

I definitely would have agreed with your statement a year or so ago, but now things have evolved quite a bit. It's no longer guaranteed that on-board sound hardware will suck, nor is it guaranteed that any given add-on card will beat most on-board solutions.

I have to admit though that trying to get me to live with any onboard chipset other than the nForce2's would be a tough sell. I might be willing to give the modern VIA/Realtek stuff a shot, but I'd approach it with the same degree of skepticism as I would a no-name add-on card.

ribbon13 wrote:

I'd like to hear more about your roommates quirk...

I believe his problem was that his sound would just cut out after a while. We researched a lot of forums (seems there are a lot of people experiencing quirks with the A7N8X-whatever series) and he finally found that disabling the on-board SATA controller helped (don't know if it was the definitive solution or not though). It's worth noting that he uses a coax digital connection to his speakers (the nice grey 5.1 Logitech ones that were top of the line before the new Z-5500's came out).

For ~$126.69 after shipping you could have had 200gb
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp … -148-033&depa=0

Yeah, but I got 160 for $50. I don't think a 200% increase in price would have been worth a 25% increase in capacity. I see that drive is SATA - the one I got (which just arrived today BTW) is normal ATA-100, which is just fine with me 😀

For those who think no one give Creative a run for its money have never heard of M-Audio.

I read some reviews of their cards a year or so ago and was turned off by the fact that they offload a lot of processing onto the CPU. I remember seeing game benchmarks that actually showed noticeable performance degradation (in frames-per-second) as a result of using an M-Audio compared to a Creative card. Things may be better now, if only in terms of increased CPU power.

BTW, I'm an audiophile. Sorry for rambling.

Jesus, I can tell 😉 Will you build me a set of speakers? 😁

I'm not so much into the hardware end of audio. I've cobbled together a 4.1 speaker setup and then used the excellent kX drivers (a third-party substitute for Creative's buggy-as-hell drivers) and made the coolest DSP setup ever:
http://www.geocities.com/mirat_beryn/hunterzdsp.html

Problem nowadays is the fact that newer games are not using the Audigy to offload to, they are using the processor. I'd really like to talk to a developer to ask why. I guess from a mainstream aspect not all users have Audigy and are using onboard.....and all users have a processer so why not use that? 🙁 They should at least offer an option in the game to switch between the two but I guess that's too much to ask.

Most older games did -- they had the option to switch between EAX, A3D, and 'Normal'.
Half-Life 2 uses Miles Sound System. That pisses me off. I fucking HATE Miles. Please start a new thread about Miles Sound System if you are interesting in hearing my rant.

A lot of games still have an option for "hardware" (hardware accelerated, usually via DirectSound3D rather than EAX) or "software" (mixed by the CPU) sounds. Most sound cards (even on-board these days) support DirectSound3D hardware mixing (and effects) to some degree.

I've noticed that the percentage of games specifically supporting EAX has been dwindling over the past 5 years. My guess is that it's a combination of cross-porting with consoles and the use of APIs/SDKs like MSS (Snover's beloved Miles Sound System)

I think I'll start that thread 😉

Snover....

7200.8???

Are you waiting for these?
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp … -148-068&depa=0

Holy sh*t

Nope, I want the SATA ones. 😀 (WTF? The 7200.8 line was supposed to be all native SATA. I guess they couldn't resist...)

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.j … ductCode=101567
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.j … ductCode=101566

Yeah, I saw those today. But $455 for 400GB is a bit outside what I'm wanting to spend. I sent an email to Seagate, and they responded that full-scale production of the drives will be beginning before the end of the month, with a nice healthy flood of drives on the market in January to bring prices down.

Well, I'd say get the 200gb ones and a raid controller... it would probably be cheaper, just more difficult to implement

NCQ is supported by very few controllers at the moment so it wont really do you any good. But if you really need it current gen models already support it

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp … -148-039&depa=0
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp … -148-034&depa=0

Seagate's new models prices wont go down more than $30-$50 come January. Maybe $60 from newegg. So current gen models are still gonna be cheaper $$/gbyte

I can see how you would wait though, if drive bay space is a concern.

Oh, NICE avatar... it kicks ass!

I was just going to say that... 😎

Went to BB today and saw 300gb Maxtor/Seagates in the lower $200 range.
If only 400gb models were that low....if only I had a job.....if only I was rich....if only I was a handsome movie actor thief guy like on Ocean's 12. 😉

if you were rich wouldn't you want something like these?

http://www.wdlsystems.com/modperl/view_servic … te&aisle_id=284

If I was really rich, I'd get a custom job by m-sys, but since I'm just a wage slage I'm gonna make a raid0 with 4 of the 8 giggers with SATA converters. Should cut down on my renders and compiles enough for an extra 15 minute break a day. I'm supposed to get a 5-digit xmas bonus, and if I don't they can take this job and shove it...