Buying a new Sound Card

[Deleted]

Im stuck on which card to get, some of them have been out for a while. I am a little out of the sound card loop, since iv been using on board sound for a long time now
.

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD Soundcard - PCI Express
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/234814

Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series Soundcard - PCI-Express
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148375

Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro 7.1 Soundcard - PCI-Express
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145851

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Soundcard - Retail Boxed
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127553

[lockblock]

unless there is something wrong with the your onboard I can't recommend buying one and definitely not a creative since you have to buy a special adapter just to get it to work with front panel connectors on your case and even with those adapters the mic still don't work for shit
............
I retract the statement about the front panel connector apparently the xgamer one you linked has an Intel HD compatible front panel connector.
didn't bother checking the rest since thats alot of money just for some extra crap that probably wont be used other then to pimp your pc

[BicycleMafioso]

While on-board cards aren't necessarily bad (in fact, they are a lot closer to the high-end than they were a few years ago), I've heard that Creative isn't that hot these days. They were in the good old days, thoguh.

I'd advocate for an Asus Xonar.

[ispano]

While on-board cards aren't necessarily bad (in fact, they are a lot closer to the high-end than they were a few years ago), I've heard that Creative isn't that hot these days. They were in the good old days, thoguh.

I'd advocate for an Asus Xonar.

Agreed, the only time i'd take the Creative over the Asus is if it was free, which mine was.

[Enola]

If you are going to use normal speakers a dedicated soundcard won't help you much against a onboard one, maybe the dac is a bit better but.. the amplifier used will be on the speakers, and ultimately a system is just has good has it's weakest link, if you use mainly headphones, and I mean good headphones a soundcard will help a good bit.
For more info you may want to read trough this thread.

[Deleted]

So somthing like this then? There are lot of different Xonars there.
#
​Asus Xonar D2X Soundcard - 7.1 PCI-Express

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141346

[llDemonll]

Onboard Audio
Audio Chipset: VIA VT1708S
Audio Channels: 8 Channels

You have onboard audio, you don't need a sound card unless you're doing professional work

[Deleted]

While on-board cards aren't necessarily bad (in fact, they are a lot closer to the high-end than they were a few years ago), I've heard that Creative isn't that hot these days.

The common Realtek audio chipset can't do frequencies above 20khz at all really, and struggles a bit with lows as well. But you'd need significantly above average speakers to hear it, or higher quality headphones. Not to mention your hearing will need to be near perfect.

The perhaps biggest reason in modern times is because its not uncommon that there are interference and noise issues however. Helicopter noises, especially on sound inputs, are still not uncommon on the latest Z68 boards.

Creative has suffered horribly really ever since the Vista audio revamp. It completely killed the EAX advantage they had previously relied on, and they have never been able to recover adequately since. Signal to Noise ratio is still good, and they do still do better when used for older EAX based titles, but the Xonars do a bit better otherwise.

[Deleted]

Apparetly my on board does

The onboard 8-channel HD audio (High Definition Audio, previously codenamed Azalia) CODEC enables high-quality 192KHz/24-bit audio output,

But how can i check it really does?

[Deleted]

Does what?
Keep in mind that its rarely meaningful / a good idea to run above 48KHz/24-bit.