Voodoo 1 didn't have SLI support.... I'm locking in this monster 1996 rig to hardware during its day! LOL
Building Gaming Machine Of Doom!
- Thread starter Quitch
- Start date
Voodoo 1 didn't have SLI support.... I'm locking in this monster 1996 rig to hardware during its day! LOL
Stop it now Swayee your making Quitch feel inadequate 
Tell me more as ive just bought one of these :
http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1150274517,13461,
Tell me more as ive just bought one of these :
http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1150274517,13461,
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Personally I wouldn't even bother with a seperatre sound card. They seem to cause more problems than they solve these days. I would just get a motherboard with HD Audio that supports Dolby Digital Live.
Yeah I don't know about X-Fi. Maybe a super cheap used Audigy 2 ZS or Audigy 4 if anything, IMO.
I'm also not at all convinced about the value of the SLI option. The setup seems to have lots of pitfalls with compatibility and the power usage/heat output would be crazy. Efficiency varies greatly per app, as well.
I'm also not at all convinced about the value of the SLI option. The setup seems to have lots of pitfalls with compatibility and the power usage/heat output would be crazy. Efficiency varies greatly per app, as well.
Rainbow Man
Veteran
Realtime dolby encoding was shown to cause horrific CPU consumption I seem to recall back when HD audio was first previewed. It ws in the neighborhood of 40% or the thereabouts.
Since I believe it's a MS driver that makles the whole shebang tick I really doubt thius picture has changed much except CPUs have gotten somewhat faster (not a terribly huge amount though).
Also what's the big fdeal with doly digital anyway? It sounds worse than straight analog audio out due to the compression used and I hear the optical link is prone to causing bit errors further worsening audio fidelity.
Peace.
qft
Well thats why you connect it to a home theatre system with an encoder build in (as virtually all do).
I would be interested to see the benchmarks if you have any links. If the performance hit is really that big then maybe DDL isn't so great. However when we are talking quad core CPU's which at todays speeds probably wouldn;t take more than about 25-30% hit on one core its not all that bad.
With analog you need speakers which support the different cables and thats not something all (or even many?) home theatre systems do. So if you want to use a HT system and/or an SPDIF for your sound, DDL is the only way to get true positional audio.
DDL should convert all your PC's sound output to true DD 5.1 automatically as I understand it, regardless of source. Not sure though how that compares to analog and EAX etc...
could it be because my 5.1 speakers dont have a decoder
many 5.1 speaker systems dont
practically no 4.1 speaker systems do
or 2.1 speaker systems
in fact out of logitecs current speaker range only 1 out of the 15 sets has a decoder
and out of creatives current range 45 speaker sets only 4 have a decoder
ps: nforce boards used to do dolby live encoding why did they abandon it ?
many 5.1 speaker systems dont
practically no 4.1 speaker systems do
or 2.1 speaker systems
in fact out of logitecs current speaker range only 1 out of the 15 sets has a decoder
and out of creatives current range 45 speaker sets only 4 have a decoder
ps: nforce boards used to do dolby live encoding why did they abandon it ?
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Yeah if you want to use PC speakers. Personally I don't much care PC speakers so I go for regular home theatre setups and just hook up my PC.
Most home theatre speakers feature DD decoding.
a lot of cards support upmixing eax cards do although upmixing is a function seperate to eax
ps: with dolby live 5.1 isnt the rear channel mono ?
Since i play games almost exclusively on headphones i want devs to concentrate of better hrtf
ideally i would love games to support the holy grail of 3d sound Holophonics
listen to this with headphones
http://www.2loop.com/hsound.html
or this
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA
or
http://www.holophonic.ch/archivio/testaudio/phon.mp3
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Rainbow Man
Veteran
Na, I'm not a natural living repository for all the world's weblinks!
I think I read some test on Anandtech or extremetech or such. I twas a while ago after all. Going to thoswe sites and giving the sound reviews archive a cursory examination ought to pick SOMETHING up.
Qyite a lot just to get 3D sound in a game I think. Especially if my x-fi can do the same in rouhgly 5% CPU or maybe even less.
Well don't most receiver systes have the 3 inputs used for analog surround that are common on PC systems?
A friend of mine has an Onkyo receiver he bought many years ago now and it has it.. I know the dangers of trying to establish a pattern from an isolated case
but there can't be too many different kinds of analog surround inputs can it? Heh.Dunno. I've never heard anyone claim that.. It shouldn't be I think since DD's perfectyly able to support stereo rear channels.
If I'm gonna spend 40% CPU on DD live encoding it should bloody well support all channels!
Peace.
I wouldn't put an Audgy 2 or 4 in my machine, the codec used for the front speakers creates an irritating hiss which drives me insane. I don't like the idea of on-board sound because now I need to balance speed against the quality of the codec the board has, and even the best aren't as good as the discrete sound cards yet, AFAIK.
There are cheap(-ish) cards capable of real-time DDL 5.1 encoding of DirectX sound streams, if that's what rings your bell. I have one based on the C-Media 8768+ chipset, it drives a DDL decoder via optical SPDIF. It's reasonably good, though I'm not going to get into a debate about bit errors and compression and other pseudo-audiophile stuff.
Well don't most receiver systes have the 3 inputs used for analog surround that are common on PC systems?
A friend of mine has an Onkyo receiver he bought many years ago now and it has it.. I know the dangers of trying to establish a pattern from an isolated case
I don't think its that common, I don't buy high end but certainly the last two systems I bought in the £100-£200 range don't have more than stereo analog inputs.
Here's a nice soundcard if you want DDL or DTS Connect sound via spdif:
http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=28
It will also take some of the performance hit away from using onboard audio. Im tempted to get one myself actually as my current HDA doesn't support DDL.
Funnily enough Auzentech have just released a new soundcard which offers the best of all worlds.....
http://www.xsreviews.co.uk/reviews/misc/auzentech-prelude-71/
The prelude uses the X-Fi core including X-RAM so you get all the features, quality and performance of the best X-Fi's including EAX 5 but you also get DD Live and DTS Connect.
What more could you ask for?
If I was going to get a new soundcard, I wouldn't hesitate to make it this. Especially if I were building a top end systsem!
EDIT: Oh, and it comes with non creative drivers that work fine with Vista (apparently)
http://www.xsreviews.co.uk/reviews/misc/auzentech-prelude-71/
The prelude uses the X-Fi core including X-RAM so you get all the features, quality and performance of the best X-Fi's including EAX 5 but you also get DD Live and DTS Connect.
What more could you ask for?
If I was going to get a new soundcard, I wouldn't hesitate to make it this. Especially if I were building a top end systsem!
EDIT: Oh, and it comes with non creative drivers that work fine with Vista (apparently)
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