Sorry for the silly newb question but I'm just getting around to upgrading my PC after a few years of neglecting it. I picked up a Gigabyte mobo with a Realtek ALC888B as the onboard sound. I've got an x-fi fatal1ty gamer from my old rig and I'm wondering if it's worth installing these days? Is the x-fi leaps and bounds better then todays onboard sound chips? Not sure if it matters but this will be primarily for gaming and hooked up to Logitech Z-5500 digital 5.1 speakers. The thought of hooking the onboard sound via an optical cable appeals to me more then the 3 RCA jacks the Creative card requires. I also hate the ugly flat cable that connects the front bay panel to the x-fi itself.
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Realtek ALC888B vs X-Fi
- Thread starter Vindicis
- Start date
Well the X-Fi buys you better analogue converters/opamps if you hook up analogue. Can you hear the different? Maybe, likely not on those speakers. Of more importance to gaming it buys you hardware accelerated sound in the form of OpenAL and ALchemy. If you want hardware sound in games, you'll need your X-Fi.
As for the optical connection, something like that can be gotten for the X-Fi, if you want it. In either case you need to make sure there is Dolby Digital Live or DTS Interacive encoding if you want surround sound, otherwise the sound will be 2-channel only.
As for the optical connection, something like that can be gotten for the X-Fi, if you want it. In either case you need to make sure there is Dolby Digital Live or DTS Interacive encoding if you want surround sound, otherwise the sound will be 2-channel only.
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Yep X-FI is a ton better as long as you got decent speakers to tell the difference of course.
"Lots better and a ton better."
Well there you go, how can you argue with that sort of scientific evidence.
Do you guys really think he would be able to tell the difference with a set of logitech speakers?????
I do not.
The only advantage of the creative card for the instance the OP mentioned would be hardware accelerated games as mentioned in response #1.
Well there you go, how can you argue with that sort of scientific evidence.
Do you guys really think he would be able to tell the difference with a set of logitech speakers?????
I do not.
The only advantage of the creative card for the instance the OP mentioned would be hardware accelerated games as mentioned in response #1.
Redshirt #24
2[H]4U
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Depending on the game, yes. If it uses a custom sound engine or OpenAL, ALchemy won't help you.
I would swear by creative sound cards in the past. I guess I simply had tremendous luck with them and also the performance was stellar weather firing up a EAX game or mixing audio with the included ASIO support. Well now its a been a good few years since the golden age of EAX and DirectSound. The playing field has changed completely with the introduction of Windows Vista and Windows 7; for one DirectSound is simply not supported and so is EAX in its native form as it is an extension of DirectSound. Creatives Alchemy helps bring back some of that performance BUT most new games have moved past EAX by simply dropping support which really negates the use of Creative Alchemy. Another very good aspect to consider is that onboard audio has come a long way and its present iteration commonly marketed as HD Audio is actually very decent. I have read that some people have had trouble using MIC's and mixing audio with onboard. While I can tell you to move to an good add in card to if you mix I have not had any issues with the mic. Distortion in the MIC channel is usually caused by leaky capacitors and other components and is subject to the mainboard design and/or the state of its components. By all means for general use onboard works. If you are using Windows 7 then I would recommend using the your Realtek ALC 888 simply because the drivers work with modern games and they don't break after every ten hours of game play. The sound is crisp and clear and I don't seem to notice a significant difference over my Senheiser headphones in Win 7. With Windows XP my old Creative X-fi ExtremeMusic and the newer PCI-E X-fi Fetality Pro just rock, however I have grown accustomed to Windows 7 to a point I decided to retire my rebellious Creative cards. What I can't get over is how Creative has done very little since Vista came out to fix the drivers. I have had the opportunity to work with Realtek's ALC 626,887 and 888 chips and from what I can say I would choose them over anything creative in a Windows 7 environment.