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SB Live! (CT4780) or Audigy EAX Advanced HD (SB0090/1394?) for the Athlon build?

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First post, by lepidotós

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As a reminder: Athlon 750 (or 700, may downclock it just so it doesn't get so hot to hopefully extend the life of it), KX133 on an Asus K7V, and I plan on running Mandrake 8.2, Fedora Core 3, and Windows NT 5.0.1796 just for the variety of it and to try it out to see how far it can go. I used to daily drive Whistler 2419 in a VM for a few months when I was 15 and use ReactOS occasionally, so I'm comfortable tiptoeing around beta quality OSes' seams.

I own both cards already, and they're sitting next to me (and each other) on my desk right now, so it's not a question of which to buy, just which works out better -- I've heard the Audigies are more stable on Intel PCs, but if it works fine as it is on AMD and sounds better than the Live! (or the as far as I can see completely not there onboard audio), I'd prefer it. The Audigy has a 1394 under the Audigy wordmark and colored outputs, which from looking around I'm pretty sure means it's an OEM card, and I don't really know if that means it needs any special considerations, I've seen it go either way on forum posts before.

Of course, this all becomes moot if the Audigy (or the Live!) doesn't work -- I bought it from a thrift store when I was like 14, so it's been a little while and I haven't had the opportunity to test it out until now, though as far as I remember the Live! did claim to work when I bought it off eBay. Still, considering both cards look pretty good, no obvious burst caps or chips with discolored spots, I'm going to assume they work until proven otherwise.

Thanks for the advice.

Reply 1 of 5, by The Serpent Rider

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In general, original Audigy is always more preferable. Unless you specifically want game-port to be combined with audio ports.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 2 of 5, by Joseph_Joestar

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Avoid SBLive and Audigy 1 cards on VIA chipsets. They may trigger the VIA latency bug which can affect your system in various weird ways.

Use Audigy 2 or ZS instead.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 3 of 5, by lepidotós

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Alright, thanks for the input. Found a 2 ZS on the 'Bay for a good price and ordered it, though don't really have a good use for the Live! or 1 EX anymore. I guess I could see whether any interesting computers can use them, or if I should just start on a Baby AT K5 system for DOS and find some Pentium II-era specific stuff to use the GX1 with so I can put one of them in there.

Or, actually, I could look into something like a P4 since I have some RDRAM lying around...

Reply 5 of 5, by lepidotós

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Interesting... I have a 180nm K7700 alongside my A0750 (and freebie K7500 that tagged along with a HSF assembly) that according to CPU-World is 1.6. I wonder if there's much headroom to undervolt from there...
50 MHz isn't all that much speed to lose, either. I might just go with the 700 for most purposes then, if it works. I still haven't tested it because I just now got a PSU that actually supplies enough power to the 5V and 3V rails and the cable isn't long enough, and it's 24 pin meaning the clip is blocked by a capacitor, so I'm going to need a 24 to 20 extension cable.

As for the Live and Audigy 1, the 1 is still sitting on my desk but the Live is now in my Dell and working well, Half-Life sounds pretty amazing with EAX.

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