Seems my onboard sound has died (ac97) and I need a decent sound card and I'm after something with optical out.. surround sound isn't needed. Im just after something quality and new.
thanks.

save up for a new board - dead board soon follows dead ac97, and it'll prolly be better and cheaper than a decent pci soundcard

last edited by koopz at 17:31:25 14/Oct/07

i agree on board sound these days is all you need.. get a new mobo

Is it possible to have surround sound and EAX support in vista without needing a X-Fi card?

Creative SoundBlaster Audigy Value Sound Card 7.1 - $42.00 + Creative Sound Blaster Digital I/O Module - $25.00

Works for me

I have an Audigy 2 Value.

A definate difference over the onboard sound on my old P4PE.

I now have an Asus M2N-X and the sound isn't too bad at all. I haven't installed the drivers etc for the Audigy yet.

last edited by mission at 21:13:36 14/Oct/07

Is it possible to have surround sound and EAX support in vista without needing a X-Fi card?

Yes, with an Audigy however you need to (ridiculously) PAY for the drivers (~ $10 USD ) to download them
XFi ALchemy

awesome thanks guys.

i thought onboard sound was good enough too. until i had issues with it and put an audigy 2 value in it and woah, the sound difference was quite noticable

Onboard is incredibly crap compared to a dedicated sound card
It's like comparing onboard graphics to a dedicated vid card

Might be ok if your running through a pissant set of $30 headphones cause you won't notice the diff anyway
Same as looking at a game in 800x600 cause that's all your monitor can scale to.

On board sound works.

Go to the creative forums and look at the people with problems. Creative blame the game developers.