Is a sound card worth it?

[Nagasama]

creative sucks, they crapped on about 5 million soundblaster audigy users that actually had the nerve to want to run vista.
but anyways...
at circuit city today i noticed that they had the fatality xtreme gamer for 124 dollars on clearance. thats a steal.

 

[liam]

yeah with circuit city going out of business, they have a lot of good deals nowadays.

 

[mouldeeves]

Ok, I have decided that if i would get a graphics card i will go for the Creative X-fi Xtreme gamer. Would this sound card paired with Logitech 5.1 G51s make a sound difference worth paying 60 pounds for? Also would there be and bad issues with vista?

 

[saltynay]

If you can stretch your budget to asus xonar D2/D2X or a Auzentech x-fi prelude you will not look back simply brilliant cards in all ways the Auzentech doesn't have any of the issues of the creative x-fi cards and has better quality components to give a richer sound. I have the Asus xonar and I bought as I was forced with a motherboard without onboard sound to get a soundcard before that I believed that they were not upto value to performance to warrant a home user getting one. I was wrong and now see the light everything sounds so much richer and simply brilliant plus the asus xonar and the auzentech x-fi are excellent value for money as they wipe out pretty much all other cards on the market. They are however 3 times more expensive then the one you put forward in your first post.
Creative cards don't like vista and they are so high up there own arses as they have been top of the market since there conception they just aren't bringing out the quality that they should via software/drivers/components. Go with the new and fresh asus or auzentech and read some reviews....

 

[mouldeeves]

Because of the advice given by saltynay I have, once again, become uncertain. I looked around and found a relatively well priced Asus sound card with some good reviews: Asus Xonar D1 PCI Sound Card - £51.5 - AWD-IT.CO.UK would this work well with Logitech G51s and run nicely with vista?

 

[saltynay]

If you can't stretch your budget that little bit more then the D1 is an excellent card and gets my vote. I think it comes in a DX variant if you want to use up a pci-express slot rather then the pci slots. Pci-e x1 are normally only used for raid cards atm whilst pci is infinitely more useful

 

[shan1784]

Just a side note on my recent sound card purchase... I bought the Logitech X540 5.1 speakers and then a week later decided to get a sound card to take full advantge of the 5.1 sound in games and what not...

I picked up a SB xtreme audio x-fi, installed it, and had all kinds of issues. After messing around with it for hours I realized that the card was defective and also blew out all the channels on my speakers except for the front channels.

I returned both the card and speakers, exchanged the speakers for another set, and exchanged card for the xtreme gamer x-fi... I installed and it works perfectly. I'm still trying to get all the settings finalized for the best gaming but other than that I really am happy with the purchase, except for the hassel with the first card...

I have Vista 64 with no driver issues as well...

 

[veg1992]

Ya since an X-Fi Xtremeaudio is a re-branded Live! card.. you'll get pretty much crap for driver support, just like us SB Audigy users...

The X-Fi users on the other hand, have it like gravy.. I'm boycotting Creative now...

 

[Eclipse7]

Im using the xfi xtreme gamer fatality. I actually got it for a steal too, $100 about a year and a half ago at circuit city. Its a great card, I love mine, I noticed a big difference between it and the onboard sound. And I use headphones, im sure the difference would be even clearer when using a set of speakers.

 

[1337_JohnN]

HT Omega ftw.