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I have an older XFi Extreme music PCI card laying around, Would it make a difference with music...

post #1 of 4
3/22/11 at 8:48pm
Thread Starter 

I have this older card laying around,  i'm just using a simple 2.1 setup,  also using the onboard audio...    my question is..   Would this PCI soundcard give better music clarity over onboard,  I'm running a Phenom Quad..  8 Gigs of ram and Windows 7.

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post #2 of 4
3/22/11 at 10:24pm

I'm pretty sure any PCI device has more noise isolation from motherboard components (Power circuitry) and should have less noise. I would think for sure.

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post #3 of 4
3/23/11 at 7:21am

Going to play the devils advocate and say integrated tech has definitely reached the level of most standalone cards, especially vanilla x-fis.

 

At the same time, the benefits of using the X-Fi over the onboard audio is less CPU utilization.  As onboard sound(as most onboard raid) is primarily software driven ie: CPU bears most of the burdon) whereas the X-Fi has its own processor.  This used to be a significant bottleneck at one point, not sure if it still is.


Edited by ninjikiran - 3/23/11 at 7:22am
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post #4 of 4
3/23/11 at 12:44pm

If you are hooking crap up directly to your onboard audio, the x-fi will make your soudn better because of better isolation. If you are just outputting digital sound, via spdif or coax, it wont make any difference. Normally, if you had a crappy machine, the sound card would be used to actually PROCESS the sound too, leaving your CPU clock cycles free. However, your machine is more than capable of running the latest junk. Run some performance tests with games and see how it goes. Games should be getting a couple more fps with the card in.

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