The Sound Blaster X-Fi which supports EAX 5.0 HD is the top for XP IMO. I see listing that start at $15-20.

Audigy 2 zs is the best and most backwards compatible.

The auzentech x-fi was the best pci but not good for retro before xp

Best pcie? Idk.

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-08-11, 21:03:

Audigy 2 zs is the best and most backwards compatible.

The auzentech x-fi was the best pci but not good for retro before xp

Best pcie? Idk.

How about the Audigy 2 Sb0350?

The Audigy 4 Pro should be the best Creative card for XP.
https://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/creative-audigy-4-pro
The SNR is better than the 2 ZS but is it also goes for more and is harder to find, especially with the external box.

The Audigy 2 SB0350 is the Audigy 2 ZS.

If you need PCIe, you can get a Chinesium version of the Sound Blaster Live!

Demonslayer2103 wrote on 2022-08-11, 21:39:

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-08-11, 21:03:

Audigy 2 zs is the best and most backwards compatible.

The auzentech x-fi was the best pci but not good for retro before xp

Best pcie? Idk.

How about the Audigy 2 Sb0350?

So a vanilla audigy 2

From google:
”
Audigy2 ZS can decode (in hardware) DTS/DTS-ES and Dolby Digital 5.1/Dolby Digital EX (6.1/7.1) material. Audigy2 can 'only' do Dolby Digital EX up to 6.1. Audigy2 ZS can do ASIO 2.0 recording at 24-bit/96KHz. Audigy2 (eX version aside) can do it at 16-bit/48KHz
“
Other than that, I think it’s basically almost the same.

Depending on hardware. You may not want to go too new. Sometimes newer cards and drivers will use more cpu.

This is why a geforce 3 has the record on a k6 and not a radeon 9800

The X-Fi cards can do everything the Audigy cards can do, but one major difference is that the X-Fi cards have a much better resampling engine that allows 44Khz audio to sound much better than Audigys and older.

They did release on the tail end of XP's life. But they support Hardware accelerated audio under XP. When the price of an Audigy 2 or 4 is the same as an X-Fi, I'm not getting why they are being recommended. Especially with the Audigy 1&2 feeling like supped up Lives that comfortability support Win98 and DOS gaming there.

For PCI-E an Audigy RX will work. Although It's just an Audigy 4 with a PCI-E bridge chip.

SScorpio wrote:

have a much better resampling engine that allows 44Khz audio to sound much better than Audigys and older.

X-Fi can switch base frequency to 44kHz too.

OP, given the diverse opinions above all touch on different features, it might be useful to expand a bit on what you are going to be using the card with:
- what sort of speakers (stereo, surround etc)?
- XP only or possibly other OS too?
- which motherboard and indeed CPU?

Back in time, I had a Sound Blaster Connect and a Sound Blaster Live! 24-Bit External. Both USB.

Then I switched to a Asus Xonar D1 (PCI).
Wonderful soundcard for its time. Such a nice SNR the DAC offered!
Was a pleasure to use with semi-professional headphones (AKG K-141, Sennheiser HD-424).. ^^

Edit: All "cards" were kind of compliant to Direct Sound 3D and EAX.
- That's what XP makes so interesting for old games, I guess.
It's the last Windows to support Direct Music (MIDI SoftSynths!) , Direct Sound 3D (HW acceleration, mixing) , Aureal A3D, OpenAL and EAX 2.x (?).
The later Windows OSes don't support that anymore. OpenAL wrappers must be used. And those other things like ASIO which may still work don't really matter to games.. :(

Jo22 wrote:

It's the last Windows to support Direct Music (MIDI SoftSynths!) , Direct Sound 3D (HW acceleration, mixing) , Aureal A3D, OpenAL and EAX 2.x (?).

EAX was an extension for DirectSound3D and later for OpenAL. Aureal3D is separate API and theoretically can work in Vista+ environment.

The system is only going to be running windows xp. It has a stereo setup. The cpu is a i7 4770 motherboard is a asus h87m-plus.

Audigy RX if you want something new that'll work in XP.

I had another motherboard and cpu laying around a gigabyte ga-ma790fxt-ud5p and a amd athlon phenom ii x6 1090t tried play serious sam on it with the on board audio and it had eax enabled is that normal?

Demonslayer2103 wrote on 2022-08-20, 08:48:

I had another motherboard and cpu laying around a gigabyte ga-ma790fxt-ud5p and a amd athlon phenom ii x6 1090t tried play serious sam on it with the on board audio and it had eax enabled is that normal?

Yes.

Many on-board sound solutions from the mid to late 2000s had up to EAX 2 support. This was often done in software though, so there was a performance hit when playing EAX games.