Decent Sound Card. Nothin' Fancy

[groudon39]

Hi all,

Since I'm currently using more CPU cycles with my onboard sound than I would like. I'm currently looking into a base model soundcard of sorts. I'm not loyal to any specific brand or anything, just would like to have a good one that will let me disable my onboard sound to reduce the workload of the CPU a little more.

Here's what I currently do/play right now

*Listen to a CD every so often, not all the time though
*Watch a DVD occasionally
*Play Flight Simulator 2004 quite a bit
That's about all I do/play pertaining to sound.

The speaker setup I currently have is a 3 piece speaker system. A left and right speaker w/subwoofer. They are Labtec speakers, sorry, can't remember the model number for them. They sound great right now and the sub has a lot of bass even when it's turned down really, really low.

I would just like to hear what you guys think about a nice entry level soundcard that will enhance my music, movie, and FS experience on my computer. Thanks in advance, groudon39

 

[KA3]

a sound blaster live! should work just fine. theyre only about $30 online. look at tigerdirect.com, gameve.com or ebay. best of luck.

 

[snowman]

sb lives are good quality cards.the hercules Fortissimo III is a good card for about $45 with plenty of features. check www.newegg.com for prices. its a newer card than the sb live series but priced very well. i plan to get one next paycheck.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

SB Lives insist on installing sound for a DOS environment, thus taking away an extra interrupt and added resources, which may upset other hardware. Also, their software is rather bloated.

I agree with Snowman, that the Hercules Fortissimo III is the better choice. You can throw any speaker-combination at it, from 2.1 to 6.1 and I think even 7.1

Another Hercules model that I particularly like is the Game Theater XP. see the link:
http://us.hercules.com/products/product.php3?id=17

 

[groudon39]

Thanks fellas, I'll seriously look into all the ones you suggested. Got another quick question for ya'. Why is it when I type in the word "computer" I have a link associated with it to some Mobile PC microsoft site? At least it's a link in my posts???? Thanks, groudon39

 

[groudon39]

there....it did it again with the "Mobile" "PC" and "microsoft" words????? WTF?

 

[groudon39]

Do I do that on this site, or on their site????? And how? I looked on both, couldn't find the place to place that text :S