Yeah, supposedly Creative is going down the toilet these days. I never had a problem with them back when I bought their Sound Blaster Audigy 2. Nowadays though with onboard sound quality as good as it is, I have no need for a soundcard anymore.
If I did decide to get a sound card, I guess I’d stay away from Creative based on what I hear. Shame that they’ve monopolized the EAX technology.
the X-Fi is a good card. The aplification via my X-Fi is far superior to the realtek onboard crap that i have. You can’t feel the bass NEARLY as much. I have two satelite speakers that sit on my desk, and with my x-fi, you can feel the speakers pounding my floor so much that a glass of water on the kitchen table downstairs from my room will have vibration in it, and it wont distort it.
m-audio makes the best sound cards for recording though…
my x-fi works perfectly in both xp and vista 64
I second a recommendation for m-audio, I use M-audio equipment for recording on my mac, and it’s top notch. I assume that the PC equivalents are of the same calibur.
yeah, the PC ones are great… the internal ones though are a bitch to configure with winxp. The newer ones, i’ve heard, work well on vista though.
I have an internal MAudio card and I haven’t had any trouble configuring it to do recording or anything. I’ve had some issues with games, but I haven’t been able to determine if that is a fault of the card, the software, or some other part of my system. But having a full orchestra (120+ instruments) loaded and able to play it all without a bit of distortion is awesome. :tup:
I couldn’t get my SPDIF ins to work for some reason in XP… i forget what card i had… but i ulimately traded it for my X-Fi, and I traded an old laptop for the front panel.
I use the realtek onboard my Gigabyte P35 DS3R, and it works superbly. I also have the Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1s, probably one of if not the best consumer level PC speakers ever made. If these speakers can’t pick up any discernable audio flaws from the onboard sound, then there aren’t any. Bass mids and highs all sound crystal clear and full. At all volumes.
It’s generally well accepted these days that the only reason to get a soundcard is if you care about EAX in your games (and even then you have to go with Creative), or if you are concerned with the few frames per second you gain by taking the audio processing task away from your processor. Even that is becoming a non-issue with dual and quad core processors becoming the norm. Few games take advantage of more than one or two cores, leaving unused cores free to take care of tasks like audio processing for no performance hit in games.
Of course if you do some sort of studio work that requires advanced features that onboard audio doesn’t have, obviously you need a soundcard. But for most consumers and gamers, they no longer serve a purpose.
(It should be noted that some onboard sound does indeed suck. There’s another technology competing with realtek and I believe it’s generally frowned upon, but I can’t think of the name of it. Most realtek onboard sound usually gets good reviews though. Just check for your specific mobo and see if your onboard sound sucks or not. =p)
i have the same speakers. they don’t push out the bass NEARLY as well with the Realtek as opposed to the X-Fi… It’s weird, I guess…
EDIT:
sorry, I have the 2.0’s, not the surround. My speakers pump out MASSIVE bass, as i said, it will shake the room downstairs from me, and still come out clear.
That’s only with the X-Fi’s crystalizer on and tweaked bass settings. The RealTek I have on board pushes out the bass really well, however, if i put the windows vol. above half way, it distorts everything when the volume notch is above 1/3 high. the creative lets me go about half way with the windows volume all the way up before it distorts.
Must be your mobo. My windows volume is always 100%. I typically listen to my speakers at somewhere between 30 and 40 (goes up to 80). Sometimes I go as loud as 50, but that’s uncomfortably loud for me sitting right in front of them. No distortion in any of that.
not sure… but whatever… i have my X-Fi now, and that’s all that matters i guess. 
<–another x-fi xtrememusic user :rock:
for a little over two grand. This is meant to watch movies, TV, and encode videos for y’all. I already have a hybrid Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive, but – figured I might as well get a system that had it working out of box. =P
Is there anything amiss here? I know this is probably the lamest post in this entire thread, but – the breakdown of my current computer is one of the reasons I’ve been putting up less, so I really do want to get this fixed up. :sad:
What’s the best way to clear up RAM? I looked for some programs, and the one I"m using isn’t very good. (FreeRAM XP Pro)
I feel like you could piece that together yourself for much less than that.
Don’t bother with the Soundblaster XFI card, get one from Auzentech instead.
Since you already have a standalone combo drive, I don’t know how much Dell is charging you for theirs, but a LG combo drive for PC is about 200$.
It might be more cost effective to get 2x500GB HDD instead of a single 750
I agree with the Auzentech. The LG combo drive is almost 300 on Newegg right now.
750GB drives cost pretty much the same price per GB as 500GB drives currently.
300? Jesus lol, all about Canadian pricing! That goes for my reasoning with the 2x500 too =\
Thanks for the feedback, that’s very helpful.
Yeah, I already have that LG drive - I might not get it without the BR drive shipping with it, but I wanted to make sure it was actually expected to play it out of box. And I’ll be putting my existing 750GB SATA drive in as drive 2, so it’ll end up being 2x750GB anyways. 
Zach,
Any reason why you want to buy it from Dell? Based off your experience with Microsoft and your tech skills, I’m assuming you’d have no problem building your own PC with the same components for much less. Am I missing something?
It’s for my home computer, as opposed to my work computer. I’ll rip apart work machines as needed, but – just mostly laziness and interest in a configuration that other people have already pioneered all the random issues out of. I work closely enough to drivers to know that most drivers for everything have some random issue, and so hewing more closely to highly supported components will lead to a happier life. I’m OK with creating my own mix, but – I don’t want to accidentally waste weeks because I accidentally chose a component that was dodgy. =P
so: fear, laziness, uncertainty.