I'm researching building a new rig as my current Athlon XP/Geforce 4 doesn't have all the gumption to run Half-Life 2 with eye candy on.....and I want that. 
I'm stumped on sound cards. I need a good music card, but more importantly, something that will perform without complaint on all the newest gaming titles. I don't want to enter driver/incompatibility hell....and my Audigy 2 has at least kept me out of that for the last couple of years.
The Audigy 2 has been great for gaming and acceptable for listening to music out of my Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers. I hate to buy another one for my new rig (old box going to wife) because I've done a lot of swearing at Creative and have aspired to wean myself off of them. I'm sick of the confusing driver scheme and bloatware included on their drivers. I only use 2.1 speakers and have never used any advanced features on the Audigy2 such as EAX or sound effects etc. I need simple, good quality, and excellent gaming compatibility.
The Gigabyte motherboard (GA-K8NS Ultra-939) I am looking into has some Realtek blah blah integrated sound I would like to avoid. Too bad nvidia ditched good integrated sound.
Any help here much appreciated.
Other than this issue, I'm only stumped on whether to wait for SLI MB's....and is a Raptor HD worth the extra money.
I'm stumped on sound cards. I need a good music card, but more importantly, something that will perform without complaint on all the newest gaming titles. I don't want to enter driver/incompatibility hell....and my Audigy 2 has at least kept me out of that for the last couple of years.
The Audigy 2 has been great for gaming and acceptable for listening to music out of my Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers. I hate to buy another one for my new rig (old box going to wife) because I've done a lot of swearing at Creative and have aspired to wean myself off of them. I'm sick of the confusing driver scheme and bloatware included on their drivers. I only use 2.1 speakers and have never used any advanced features on the Audigy2 such as EAX or sound effects etc. I need simple, good quality, and excellent gaming compatibility.
The Gigabyte motherboard (GA-K8NS Ultra-939) I am looking into has some Realtek blah blah integrated sound I would like to avoid. Too bad nvidia ditched good integrated sound.
Any help here much appreciated.
Other than this issue, I'm only stumped on whether to wait for SLI MB's....and is a Raptor HD worth the extra money.
