Smack2k wrote:

Anyone that happens to have a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard, if you have SLI setup, is there any room for PCI Soundcard? Looking at photos it appears the GPUs would cover both PCI slots as one is between the two PCI-e slots and the other is right beside the PCI-e slot

Depends on upper GPU cooling.
Reference NV cooling will let you install a single slot PCI sound card in first PCI slot.
However, without moded drivers, you can't enable SLI on this board.

It looks like as long as the GPUs do not take more than 2 slots, the upper PCI slot (at mid-board) will not be blocked. It may not be happy being stuck between two rather hot GPUs, but a typical SLI setup does not leave much wiggle room.

You can most probably stuck that PCI card between those GPUs, but you will pretty much choke upper card, quite hard.

agent_x007 wrote:

Depends on upper GPU cooling. Reference NV cooling will let you install a single slot PCI sound card in first PCI slot. However, […]
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Smack2k wrote:

Anyone that happens to have a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard, if you have SLI setup, is there any room for PCI Soundcard? Looking at photos it appears the GPUs would cover both PCI slots as one is between the two PCI-e slots and the other is right beside the PCI-e slot

Depends on upper GPU cooling.
Reference NV cooling will let you install a single slot PCI sound card in first PCI slot.
However, without moded drivers, you can't enable SLI on this board.

I didn't realize that, thanks for the info. I just want to find a decent 2009 era board that I can setup with SLI and add a sound card, PCI or PCIe

Around 2008-2010 is the time sound cards became redundant. Main reasons were lack of support for hardware sound features in windows 7 (technically since vista, but who cares about vista) and the quality of onboard sound stopped being shit. Also Audio over HDMI became a thing.

Koltoroc wrote:

Around 2008-2010 is the time sound cards became redundant. Main reasons were lack of support for hardware sound features in windows 7 (technically since vista, but who cares about vista) and the quality of onboard sound stopped being shit. Also Audio over HDMI became a thing.

The death of environmental audio began in 2000 when Aureal was bought out, but the end of DirectSound3D hardware acceleration in Vista was the last nail in the coffin. A sad time indeed.

10 years later the best environmental effects I've heard are in a Minecraft mod called Sound Physics.

Koltoroc wrote:

technically since vista, but who cares about vista

People who care about always being technically correct, punctual and truthful. And I think only those people. 😀

That being said, could anyone recommend a board from the era that supports SLI, works well, and doesnt break the bank?