i am using a hercules digifire 7.1 card. but this people never update the driver. I think other than creative, sound card producers dont update their drivers. I am planning to the the older Revolution 5.1/7.1 M-Audio cards but the drivers are from 2003 for the 7.1 card and 2004 for the 5.1 card

You'll be suprised. The drivers of my Prodigy LT (V1.16 or something) which is quite old and they work with VISTA!!!!!

SB live 5.1 is already out of the VISTA support list.

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Added on February 9, 2007, 6:59 amBecause i have that card and not a X-Fi?? Just sold it off recently anyway. I think the music with Realtek is really better, games are at least on par. And i don't think there's any significant frame drops with a multi-core cpu running onboard sound...it's more than powerful enuff.

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Added on February 9, 2007, 7:01 amYep. Valve of Half Life fame has already confirm this idea. Just read it in a mag yesterday. They said multi core cpu's will spell the death of the GPU as it's much easier to scale performance using CPUs.

I think when we have 16-core CPUs, the GPUs will probably be in trouble....

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Added on February 9, 2007, 7:03 amMaybe 3 - 4 years ago onboard sound not so good and ur CPU not so powerful??

This post has been edited by Matrix: Feb 9 2007, 07:03 AM

Haha, no way. GPUs are not going to disappear anytime soon, if ever. By the time 16 core CPUs are available (in a couple of years, latest), GPUs will have advanced too. In fact, if you compare GPU and CPU performance increases over the last few years, i think you will see that the latter has improved faster. Thing is, GPUs are purpose built for massively parallel processing, while CPUs are still largely dependent on single thread performance. They are attacking different problems. GPUs also have a lot of specialized hardware for texture filtering and other fixed function operations which would take forever for a CPU to do. I don't think anyone in their right mind would say multi-core CPUs = death of GPUs. That's just daft.

Back to the soundcard issue, just as with GPUs, if you want something good or at least better than average, you always have to go with a discreet solution. And right now if you listen to music and game, x-fi is the only way to go. CPUs alone won't cut it. EAX really does work well on new creative cards.

This post has been edited by ikanayam: Feb 9 2007, 07:48 AM

Whatever you guys said, sound card is here to stay. Same like floppy, even though not many people use it (and been announced dead), there are some people still use it. And GPU will dead? Give me a break! No CPU can render as fast as a graphics card, no matter how fast and how great this integrated graphics or sound solution is, I still buy discrete sound and graphics card. Period

Putting everything onto motherboard isn't a good choice no matter how good the audio codec is. This is because a motherboard is like an electrical thunderstorm, it have lots of interference that can distort audio and makes cracking sound. And I don't want to buy a overcrowded motherboard with everything integrates on it

EDIT: My friend at college have Klipsch Promedia GMX 2.1 speaker and using onboard sound (don't know which one), and to my surprise it sound like crap! I dare to say if make a comparison between me and him which speaker will do the best, my speaker will do better in terms of voice and clarity (SB Live! 5.1 + Logitech X-230) . Yes that speaker (Klipsch) have a great bass (makes my head dizzy) but it sounded like it lacks something without a sound card, lacks depth

This proves (at least to me) that a great speaker is useless without a great sound card, and my friend agrees with me, he said that my speaker sound so much better even though the RM400+ price gap

This post has been edited by Najmods: Feb 9 2007, 08:53 AM

^ really ? I know relatively, a PCI SC beat the onboard cards but some MOBO are embeding 'high quality' onboard SC. And we know that GPU is going to stay because we see more and more players entering the market. Previously we see only Asus, Saphire, N-Vidia, ATI, MSI, Winfast, Gigabyte then we saw Powercolor, Galaxy, colourful and few other with chinese character on the box. This is a sign that GPU is going strong. Looking at SC, i see only creative. Check the price lists at Low Yat - we see only Creative cards. with only 3-4 shops selling 1-3 cards of other brand. Is this not the sign that SC is dying ?

True enough, just because its not flourishing doesn't mean its sure death for the SC. Creative still wants to have market presence, just that probably the advancements will not be so great compared to other components.

Unless everyone start listening a true 3D sound system. Otherwise u hardly see a significant different.

an onboard sound card is good enough to meet the basic 2.1 speaker setup. And these onboard sound card will get better on the 2.1 setup in the future.

hm... even built in SC are getting DTS certification... Creative and Razer are on the border of extinction... and are falling to the extintion side...

On the contrary, if it's not flourishing and been stagnant for so long, it's definitely dying.

(1) Creative sales figures tells it all. The biggest boy in the business with sales dropping like flies...what else is there to say.

(2) No active competition. This simply means other companies don't see this as a potential market. Otherwise, you think so many people out there dunno how to do business when there's demand? The truth is, no demand=no market=minimum supplier.

(3) Some on-board sound has proven to beat even discrete sound card. SoundStorm is a fine example of this. Too bad it was dropped due to various issue by Nvidia. Anyway, this can be heard in the original XBOX. IMO, the sound in my XBOX with real-time Dolby Digital encoding toast all the PC games i ever heard.

Bottom line: The sound card business is a sunset industry. There'll probably still be market for the music professional, but mass market is a thing of the past.

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Added on February 9, 2007, 2:22 pmI didn't said that. Valve did. Who am i to comment?

As for EAX, i don't think it'll flourish anymore under the control of OpenAL. MS will not let anyone else have their own ways.

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Added on February 9, 2007, 2:39 pmWe're not comparing integrated graphic-ler...we're talking future multi-core CPUs.

There's a lot of rumours like this going on around about "interference". Frankly, i've never heard any crackle with on-board sound. What thunderstorm??

The only crackle and hiss i heard is on my Prodigy LT card..due to some dodgy drivers. Luckily, with the drivers fixed, it sounds great.

IMO, the bottomline is something like this:
1) There's no doubt at this point, on-board sound will most likely unable to challenge an expensive discrete card for sound quality...PROVIDED you have the speakers to go with it. Personally, I would only listen to music using my Prodigy LT on my HT system coz it's really rocks compared to my old SB Live 5.1 or onboard sound. There will be SOME difference if use on lower end speakers with onboard sound and a high-end card, but to most people, this will be hardly noticeable to justify a sound card purchase.

2) However, most people with average expectation and average speakers and average ears will find most on-board sound quality nowadays more than acceptable. This is the main reason why the business is dying. The mass market does not see spending another RM400 Sound card as critical as upgrading their GPU or CPU or RAM.

3) With markets getting lesser and lesser, there's simply no way Creative can keep
pumping money into R&D to fund a dying market and one which improvement is ever difficult to be seen (or heard in this case) by consumers. In the end, it'll be only a small market meant for hardcore audiophile/musicians.

4) With technology improving and such, on board sound will get better and better at rock bottom price. The trend is already moving sound processing to multi-core CPUs as shown by Xbox360 and PS3 where there's no dedicated sound chip. MS is also moving in this direction, and with MS pushing the wind of change, it is an unstoppable force.

my 2 cents.

This post has been edited by Matrix: Feb 9 2007, 02:43 PM

haha, i think ive read that mag. it was pc gamerl. got alyx picture shooting at vga. haha.

this must be a jedi
i think the design of mobo has limited the growth of soundcard. abit and asus has their own, special built-in sound module. DFI boasts the karajan audio.IMO, the best way to make money for soundcard is to make sure that mobo no longer comes with built in audio except those m-ATX. make soundcard business like graphics card business. (like the old days)

This post has been edited by Skylinestar: Feb 9 2007, 06:36 PM

What you basically mean is with multi core CPU, so we don't need a graphics card to render the scene anymore? Don't make me laugh, no CPU can render as fast as a graphics card, period. Graphics development is far too fast compared to CPU. By the time CPU have 16 cores, I bet a graphics card have more than a thousand ALU's, more than a terabyte per second of memory bandwidth.

No matter how powerful the CPU is, theres a lot of disadvantages compared to discrete graphics card like memory bandwidth, look at current CPU vs GPU, CPU only have around 1.2GHz the fastest RAM with 128-bit memory bus while GPU have more than 2GHz of speeds with 256-bit memory bus (R580), and the latest 8800GTX have 384-bit while the upcoming R600 is rumored to have 512-bit memory bus. And to makes matter worse, current high end card is bottlenecked by the CPU, no matter how fast it can be!

About the sound, you just an average joe, you don't know any distortion or any anomalies on the sound itself between onboard and discrete sound card output. I don't blame you for that, it really depends on people, some people just fine with onboard sound and I don't

FYI i'm still using recent boards and the SB Live DE 5.1 still kicks those onboard sound.

My striker onboard sound card still canrt beat my Audigy 4 card in terms of sound quality.. couple with 5.1 setup, its really make a differents so i think onboard sc quality still carnt beat aftermarket sound card.

Creative is working on a "hack" to enable hardware sound acceleration on Vista for their cards via OpenAL. Looks like hardware sound acceleration is not dead yet.

FYI,

Creative got new series in the X-fi series, most notably, Extreme Gamer and Extreme Audio.

http://www.creative.com/products/welcome.asp?category=209&

I think the they're are meant for budget market. If it's cheap enuff ( < RM200), should be worth a shot.

Anyone see these cards here yet???

This post has been edited by Matrix: Feb 11 2007, 05:51 AM

I am going to get a X-Fi Sound card myself! Not becoz i want to support the SC industry just tat i want to enjoy greater sound effect!

No matter how good the MOBO SC are they are still no match for the X-fi one (dunno after 3-5 years later).

It is true that the market now have more and more ppl shifting over to MOBO Sound Card but there are still some ppl who want better quality, Creative is aiming on this market, instead of producing those lower end SC (below 200) they are now going for greater and better one.

Due to the price of X-fi currently, not much ppl will go for it (just sound onli mah why paid so much). But those that want A-class quality will most likely get them. It is more towards quality then quantity to Creative now, and the price of the cards also earn more than selling those cheap SC (below RM100)!

I guess u are not very good at reading. U r rite. I know nuts about graphics. I said the guys at Valve said that(about multicore futures to replace GPU). U know Valve? As in Half Life 2? I think they know graphics much more than u do. Look whos laughing now. The article is in a PC game mag recently...can't remember which one though.

You really don't read what people wrote don'tcha?? You haven't read why i only listen music with my HTPC rig?? I don't even wanna bother to explain as i already mention in my 2cents.

btw, got myself an X-Fi at un-resistable price coz my sister is a dealer and got contacts.... ...if it's better than my Prodigy, i'm gonna put it in my HTPC rig.

Drool people...drool....

This post has been edited by Matrix: Feb 12 2007, 04:48 PM

We still need add-in PCI sound card ler...

If your onboard sound chipset spoil, what will you do? Throw away your motherboard and buy a new one?

Better buy a new PCI sound card lor

This post has been edited by Tag_F1: Feb 27 2007, 12:21 PM

i think realtek 7.1 no as gud as SB live.. csz when u listen music and movie u will feel the diff.. SB produce more more clearly sound..