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Gaming soundcard with good driver support?

post #1 of 8
2/16/10 at 1:56pm
Thread Starter 
Hi, I purchased an Auzentech prelude a couple of years ago and it has been serving me pretty well, however with the release of Windows 7 it appears like they have dropped driver support for it(the latest driver was released about 8 months ago and is a win7 beta driver). When I spent $200~ on my Auzentech card I expected it to last me at least 4 years before they dropped support, however it seems they are only updating drivers for their brand new sound cards these days.

Does anyone know of a company that has good driver support? I know creative is notorious for driver problems and I recall seeing some bad things said about ASUS drivers, but I am not quite sure. I would be using my soundcard for both gaming and music. I am running windows 7 x64. Any help you could provide would be appreciated.

Edit: I've been looking at the ASUS Xonar Essence STX. Any opinions on it? I would be interested to see how the build in amp would drive my beyer dt 880's compared to my tube amp.
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post #2 of 8
2/16/10 at 3:36pm
Creative's driver problems are overrated and long gone, for the most part. They had some issues years ago and never got over the stigma. The windows 7 support is good. They've had working drivers since RC1. I'd get an X-fi. That is for good support and gaming anyways. Sound quality, nothing is going to touch an outboard dac, driven by a low jitter interface, so for music i'd recomend a Musiland or Hiface + dac. The X-fi's effects and 3D-positioning work great thru spdif output as well, so it can be used with a dac in this fashion.

edit: if you have any soldering aptitude at all, the x-fi is pretty easy to modify, just a couple caps and op-amps and it is in another class.
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post #3 of 8
2/16/10 at 4:20pm
For gaming, if you want support for EAX 1,2,3,4,5 and OpenAL you really have only two choices. Also, Win7 is not exactly old...it was officially just released and many companies are playing catch up. The Prelude is one of their flagship cards and they still fully support the model.
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post #4 of 8
2/16/10 at 5:10pm
The Auzentech Prelude is a good card, comes with everything you need for gaming and music if you decided to use it.

(Besides the headphone amps some of the newer cards have)
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post #5 of 8
2/16/10 at 5:43pm
These drivers are fairly new and support the Prelude.
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post #6 of 8
2/16/10 at 5:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ninjikiran View Post
The Auzentech Prelude is a good card, comes with everything you need for gaming and music if you decided to use it.

(Besides the headphone amps some of the newer cards have)
He already has the Prelude but wants something different.
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post #7 of 8
2/16/10 at 10:51pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ROBSCIX View Post
For gaming, if you want support for EAX 1,2,3,4,5 and OpenAL you really have only two choices. Also, Win7 is not exactly old...it was officially just released and many companies are playing catch up. The Prelude is one of their flagship cards and they still fully support the model.
What are the two choices ROB?

I have not completely abandoned my prelude just yet, however there are several reoccuring driver problems that Auzentech as far as I have seen refuses to even acknowledge (there is a discussion of this on the Auzentech community forums). Someone there released a repackaged driver that combines updated content from Creative paired with an older, more stable prelude driver and something that makes it work with Win7. I am trying it right now, but if it is unable to solve the problems I will probably be purchasing a new card soon.
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post #8 of 8
2/17/10 at 12:36pm
For hardware gaming cards, you have two choices,-for companies.
1. Auzentech
2. Creative Labs
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