[voodoo do-er]

On the other hand, they're more expensive, and all but the eClaro use the old PCI interface.

the pci slot is supposed to be better for sound cards, that's what I always been told
it has something to do with how there made or something

i have no clue if it's true or not

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

The PCI slot is supposed to be better for sound cards, that's what I always been told
it has something to do with how there made or something
I have no clue if it's true or not

PCI slot are a much older design then PCI-Express.
As far as I know, the PCI-Express slot is better in every way over the PCI slot.
 
Older audio processors were designed for the PCI slot and need a bridge chip to work with the PCI-Express slot on some newer sound cards.
Maybe some though that needing a bridge chip somehow makes the PCI-Express slot less capable?

 

[RushNerd]

Quote:

PCI slot are a much older design then PCI-Express.
As far as I know, the PCI-Express slot is better in every way over the PCI slot.
 
Older audio processors were designed for the PCI slot and need a bridge chip to work with the PCI-Express slot on some newer sound cards.
Maybe some though that needing a bridge chip somehow makes the PCI-Express slot less capable?

Two means to the same end. We aren't talking GPU's here.

 

[NinjaSushi2]

Quote:

they say the same thing about the i7 too, it's all marketing

 
Uh... the i7 Processor is not marketing.. The i7, i5, and i3 are completely different in every way.
Quote:

doom 3 and quake 4
it's all software now adays, heck vista and 7 cut out most hardware support for sound in dx , everything like eax is done in a software over layer.
if you want the software spoof it and run it on whatever you have.
edit
also the old doom, quake and other dos games have hardware accelerated audio, but it a completely different direction
it has to do with how midis and other module files are played. SB cards used a mpu, adlib cards use a Yamaha system, Roland systems used Linear Arithmetic, and GuS cards used a wavetable system
if you ever play old games in dosbox be sure to emulate the GuS or a Roland card in games that support them, your thank me

 
 
Not sure how to do that but if I do and figure it out I will thank you.

 

[obobskivich]

I've yet to conclusively hear a defense of why "Recon3D sucks" (yet people keep parroting it!) - so I'm pretty dismissive of such claims (Linux issues aside, because that's just Creative for you). However, the most expensive model is not worth it, because the "live drive" it includes is a joke, so step down to the straight card and save $50. The Titanium HD is also fine. Asus, HT Omega, Sondigo, etc are all C-Media based and competent until you want substantial h/w acceleration, where the Audigy, X-Fi, and SoundCore DSPs will leverage some slight advantages, but for the most part, either side of the coin is fine.

Regarding PCI vs PCIe - does not matter. PCI is not inherently better "due to the way it's made" and the extra bandwidth of PCIe is inconsequential and irrelevant for our purposes. If we were doing mastering or something of that sort, and needed to handle hundreds of channels, PCIe or PCI-X would be an appropriate choice, but we are not.

Regarding the i7 comment, I think you mis-interpreted him, the point is that just because the game is co-promoted with that card, doesn't mean much of anything. Same thing as Doom and Unreal being co-promoted with nVidia, does that mean it won't work on ATI? And i3/i5/i7 are not "completely different in every way" - they're all drawn from the same MCA and constructed by marketing.

Of your original post, just spit-balling, it's looking like $130 vs $150 vs $170. I'd get the Titanium unless you want the built-in headamp (the Xonar uses a 6120, the Recon uses a Maxim chip that doesn't drive as much power but is very competent (it's more on par with the JR4556 amps you see floating around)).

 

[voodoo do-er]

Not sure how to do that but if I do and figure it out I will thank you.

I done it before but I can't recall how
I switch to Linux long ago and that kind of software is not needed, you can do it with any card on the some software.

Uh... the i7 Processor is not marketing.. The i7, i5, and i3 are completely different in every way.

well sort of, but no, I'm talking about the thing you see in games, you know "plays best on Intel i7"
they're not different in every way at all. etch gen of i7/5/3 use the same core build
Bloomfield and sandy bridge are both core builds.. any sandy bridge cpu is about the same, the only difference is core count cache amount, clock speeds and multiplier/fsb, all of witch only determine the speed and calculations per second of the cpu. not how data is processed.
if a game is built for a sandy bridge i7, it's built for a sandy bridge i5 and i3, of curse a i7 will do better, its has more cores, chase and a higher FSB.
the cpu makes no difference as long as it's fast enough to play the game and has all the extensions needed like mmx, sse and so on.
now some game can't use more then 2/4 cores so in some cases a i7 is to much. the same goes with ram, most games are 32bit , so having more then 6/8 gb of ram in a gaming system is of little use.

edit
I think we "I" gone of topic abit lol

PCI slot are a much older design then PCI-Express.
As far as I know, the PCI-Express slot is better in every way over the PCI slot.

Older audio processors were designed for the PCI slot and need a bridge chip to work with the PCI-Express slot on some newer sound cards.
Maybe some though that needing a bridge chip somehow makes the PCI-Express slot less capable?

that sounds like what I was told AFAiR
older pcie sound card are supposed to have trouble cuz of the bridge chip , I never had one so I don't know. I was also told the increase numbers of lanes help some how.
but TBH I can't seem to see any difference in the socket as long as you don't need that bridge chip.

pci and pcie should not make any difference when it come to the sound output. but maybe pci could have some noise or emi cuz it's a bus IDK .

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

I done it before but I can't recall how
I switch to Linux long ago and that kind of software is not needed, you can do it with any card on the some software.
well sort of, but no, I'm talking about the thing you see in games, you know "plays best on inlet i7"
they're not different in every way at all. etch gen of i7/5/3 use the same core build
Bloomfield and sandy bridge are both core builds.. any sandy bridge cpu is about the same, the only difference is core count cache amount, clock speeds and multiplier/fsb, all of witch only determine the speed and calculations per second of the cpu. not how data is processed.
if a game is built for a sandy bridge i7, it's built for a sandy bridge i5 and i3, of curse a i7 will do better, its has more cores, chase and a higher FSB.
the cpu makes no difference as long as it's fast enough to play the game and has all the extensions needed like mmx, sse and so on.
now some game can't use more then 2/4 cores so in some cases a i7 is to much. the same goes with ram, most games are 32bit , so having more then 6/8 gb of ram in a gaming system is of little use.
edit
I think we "I" gone of topic abit lol

that sounds like what I was told AFAiR
older pcie sound card are supposed to have trouble cuz of the bridge chip , I never had one so I don't know. I was also told the increase numbers of lanes help some how.
but TBH I can't seem to see any difference in the socket as long as you don't need that bridge chip.

From what I understand, PCI slots are 32-bit parallel and on motherboards only one PCI slot can be working (transfering data) at a time.
Where as PCI-Express slot function with less bits per transfer, but run serial, so each PCI-Express slot works on their own, so one PCI-Express slot does not have to wait for other PCI-Express slots to finish before transferring on their own.

 

[RushNerd]

Quote:

 
Uh... the i7 Processor is not marketing.. The i7, i5, and i3 are completely different in every way.

^^This. Though they are all so damn powerful from a consumer level, it might as well be marketing lol, my i7 is putting along most of the time. 
 
I think PCI and PCI-e in relation to soundcards is the same as USB2.0 and Firewire is to video. They both handle data streams differently.

 

[NinjaSushi2]

Quote:

I done it before but I can't recall how
I switch to Linux long ago and that kind of software is not needed, you can do it with any card on the some software.
well sort of, but no, I'm talking about the thing you see in games, you know "plays best on Intel i7"
they're not different in every way at all. etch gen of i7/5/3 use the same core build
Bloomfield and sandy bridge are both core builds.. any sandy bridge cpu is about the same, the only difference is core count cache amount, clock speeds and multiplier/fsb, all of witch only determine the speed and calculations per second of the cpu. not how data is processed.
if a game is built for a sandy bridge i7, it's built for a sandy bridge i5 and i3, of curse a i7 will do better, its has more cores, chase and a higher FSB.
the cpu makes no difference as long as it's fast enough to play the game and has all the extensions needed like mmx, sse and so on.
now some game can't use more then 2/4 cores so in some cases a i7 is to much. the same goes with ram, most games are 32bit , so having more then 6/8 gb of ram in a gaming system is of little use.
edit
I think we "I" gone of topic abit lol

that sounds like what I was told AFAiR
older pcie sound card are supposed to have trouble cuz of the bridge chip , I never had one so I don't know. I was also told the increase numbers of lanes help some how.
but TBH I can't seem to see any difference in the socket as long as you don't need that bridge chip.
pci and pcie should not make any difference when it come to the sound output. but maybe pci could have some noise or emi cuz it's a bus IDK .

I won't and can't argue with you about sound or sound cards, but... I can and will argue out CPUs. You listed a moderate argument but the i3, i5, and i7 again are completely different architecture on an extreme level so to speak.
Some guy on yahoo put it best:
 
 

i3 = 2 cores with 1 thread per core.

i5 = 4 cores with 1 thread per core.

i7 = 4 cores with 2 threads per core. (OS sees it as 8 cores)

i9  (or i7e/2011/etc. etc.) = 6 cores with 2 threads per core. (OS sees it as 12 cores)

The i3 is a moderate processor useful for most people looking to play videos, music, internet browsing, spread sheets, etc. Not use for any intensive purposes and thus set at a lower price range.
The i5 is more geared to gamers as it has hands down the best price to performance ratio. Not to mention the i5-2500k and i5-2550k have some of the highest OCs achieved on consumer grade cores.
The i7 is geared more to hyper-intensive users. I.E. Where hyper threading is required such as folding, audio or video editing, rendering, etc. The increased threads don't do much for gamers but are extremely helpful in other professions or uses. 
The i7 Extreme (commonly known as 2011) is used in home servers as opposed to a Xeon server chipset used in profession servers. The i7e sporting hex core technology is best used for over the top gaming rigs, folding, and other high processor demanding situations where the CPU is most commonly the bottleneck in the system.
 
Saying that the cores are all set on each other is an over statement but a rough summarization all in all. The first three core are all 1155/1156 sockets, while i7e is 2011. They have different cache rates, L2, L3, core clocks, multiplier levels, base clock, memory controller settings, PLL voltages, Vcore settings, watt ratings, threads, graphic freq rates, etc.
i3 and i5 don't support hyper-threading while i7/i7e do.
 
Saying that they are the same processors is completely incorrect. Saying that you don't need an i7 to game is completely correct. i5-2500k/i5-2550k is the best gaming CPU. Better than IB due to heat spreader mishaps, etc. I hope this clears up any misconception or confusion for anyone.
 
Back to sound cards! 

 
 
Quote:

^^This. Though they are all so damn powerful from a consumer level, it might as well be marketing lol, my i7 is putting along most of the time. 
 
I think PCI and PCI-e in relation to soundcards is the same as USB2.0 and Firewire is to video. They both handle data streams differently.

Agreed.

 

[obobskivich]

From what I understand, PCI slots are 32-bit parallel and on motherboards only one PCI slot can be working (transfering data) at a time.
Where as PCI-Express slot function with less bits per transfer, but run serial, so each PCI-Express slot works on their own, so one PCI-Express slot does not have to wait for other PCI-Express slots to finish before transferring on their own.

PCI has aggregate bandwidth of 133MB/s per controller and is indeed 32-bit (there's PCI-X which is very similar but 64-bit and can get into the Gbit/s range of bandwidth, like PCIe), and PCIe is independent full-duplex serial data. There are advantages if you're talking about things like RAID controllers and graphics processors, but for sound cards it doesn't really matter, especially since everything uses a bridge anyways (either a stand-alone or built into the chip, SoundCore is probably the first chip that's really native - the 8788 that Asus still uses is bridged). If you were doing hojillions of operations, like what a ProTools workstation needs, PCIe offers lower latency and much higher bandwidth, which is a good deal (it also can send out more power, which is good if you have multiple DSPs or a lot of cache). Since h/w accelerated audio is basically dead, any advantages PCIe would pose there are essentially moot - PCI is more than good enough, and I wouldn't worry either way as long as the card is compatible with your system (in other words, EAX 5 on an X-Fi PCI card will still run better than no card, and the PCIe cards don't do much if anything for performance over that).

PCIe is technically superior to PCI but it's a matter of needs - if you don't need the bandwidth, power, etc then it's not of any benefit beyond compatibility. I would not say it's along the same lines as FireWire versus USB.

I won't and can't argue with you about sound or sound cards, but... I can and will argue out CPUs. You listed a moderate argument but the i3, i5, and i7 again are completely different architecture on an extreme level so to speak.
Some guy on yahoo put it best:

Sorry no. HyperThreading is not "completely different architecture" - SMT is really not that big of a thing (and it doesn't matter if you're an Intel chip or a POWER). They are not different on an extreme level, they are designed by the same product team and produced on the same manufacturing nodes and present the same ISA and MCA to the compiler (which is the same across all three) and are functionally identical from the perspective of your code. SMT, SMP, etc are all abstracted by the compiler and kernel. All of the iX family are drawn up from Nehalem or Sandy Bridge. The "most different" model would be the i3 with the integrated GPU, but adding stuff on-package still doesn't mean the ALUs, FPUs, MMUs, etc are changing whatsoever, it just means you're stacking more components on package. The pipelines are functionally identical going through these chips.

The i3 is a moderate processor useful for most people looking to play videos, music, internet browsing, spread sheets, etc. Not use for any intensive purposes and thus set at a lower price range.
The i5 is more geared to gamers as it has hands down the best price to performance ratio. Not to mention the i5-2500k and i5-2550k have some of the highest OCs achieved on consumer grade cores.
The i7 is geared more to hyper-intensive users. I.E. Where hyper threading is required such as folding, audio or video editing, rendering, etc. The increased threads don't do much for gamers but are extremely helpful in other professions or uses. 
The i7 Extreme (commonly known as 2011) is used in home servers as opposed to a Xeon server chipset used in profession servers. The i7e sporting hex core technology is best used for over the top gaming rigs, folding, and other high processor demanding situations where the CPU is most commonly the bottleneck in the system.

All marketing spiel. Every last bit. Why do I say this? because a good deal of your "moderate processor" tasks can actually end up being more intensive than than you'd think, folding is a joke, and SMT is a marketing pitch - audio/video editing relies on dedicated outboard hardware, and rendering should as well (I say should but I realize not everyone has the pockets to do it like that, so having your CPU do it is sometimes all you get). Multi-threading via SMT only works if the task is highly parallel and won't stall the pipe when it runs through - tasks like database serving and web hosting are commonly benefited - there's a reason Sun and IBM have done it for ages and ages.

The Intel Emergency Editions exist for marketing purposes. There is almost nothing that a normal consumer will do (especially gaming) where the CPU is a "bottleneck" and any big iron number crunching is absolutely going to laugh you down when you bring it a 10 or 20% increase in overall throughput. Exponential, geometric demands are not served by sub-linear gains. And the tasks have to be massively parallel to benefit from modern "big iron" (we really shouldn't use that term, because monoliths died with Seymour Cray, but whatever) - otherwise a purpose-built chip is probably the way to go.

Saying that the cores are all set on each other is an over statement but a rough summarization all in all. The first three core are all 1155/1156 sockets, while i7e is 2011. They have different cache rates, L2, L3, core clocks, multiplier levels, base clock, memory controller settings, PLL voltages, Vcore settings, watt ratings, threads, graphic freq rates, etc.
i3 and i5 don't support hyper-threading while i7/i7e do.

All irrelevant. Cache is just adding more transistors, clocks and multipliers are variable and determined at the time of stability test (what, you think Intel makes each and every sSpec item on its own node? they bin - they've binned for two decades or more). TPD and so on doesn't matter either - I can change most of those "dramatic difference" settings without changing chips, and the rest are either irrelevant, hard-locked, or minor hardware changes from a manufacturing perspective (you can stack as much cache as you want, it just wastes power and money).

 

[stv014]

Quote:

i3 = 2 cores with 1 thread per core.

i5 = 4 cores with 1 thread per core.

i7 = 4 cores with 2 threads per core. (OS sees it as 8 cores)

 
That is not entirely true, i3 and i5 both support hyperthreading, and have 4 and 8 "logical" cores that the OS sees, respectively. Although hyperthreading does not give nearly as much performance improvement as having more actual physical cores. This is from /proc/cpuinfo on an i3 running Linux (irrelevant and/or repeated parts have been removed):
 

 processor    : 0 vendor_id    : GenuineIntel [...] model name   : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2120 CPU @ 3.30GHz [...] siblings     : 4 core id      : 0 cpu cores    : 2 [...] processor    : 1 [...] siblings     : 4 core id      : 1 cpu cores    : 2 [...] processor    : 2 [...] siblings     : 4 core id      : 0 cpu cores    : 2 [...] processor    : 3 [...] siblings     : 4 core id      : 1 cpu cores    : 2 [...]

 

[NinjaSushi2]

Quote:

 
That is not entirely true, i3 and i5 both support hyperthreading, and have 4 and 8 "logical" cores that the OS sees, respectively. Although hyperthreading does not give nearly as much performance improvement as having more actual physical cores. This is from /proc/cpuinfo on an i3 running Linux (irrelevant and/or repeated parts have been removed):
 

 processor    : 0vendor_id    : GenuineIntel[...]model name   : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2120 CPU @ 3.30GHz[...]siblings     : 4core id      : 0cpu cores    : 2[...]processor    : 1[...]siblings     : 4core id      : 1cpu cores    : 2[...]processor    : 2[...]siblings     : 4core id      : 0cpu cores    : 2[...]processor    : 3[...]siblings     : 4core id      : 1cpu cores    : 2[...]

Uh no.. i3 and i5 do NOT have hyper threading support. Now does HT help on video games!? Well actually I found some benchmark test that says it does! w00t w00t
 
http://www.overclock.net/t/671977/hyperthreading-in-games/0_20
 
Is it worth the extra money? Not really considering you need a REALLY good cooler or loop to support OC and HT at the same time.

 

[obobskivich]

Uh no.. i3 and i5 do NOT have hyper threading support. Now does HT help on video games!? Well actually I found some benchmark test that says it does! w00t w00t

http://www.overclock.net/t/671977/hyperthreading-in-games/0_20

Is it worth the extra money? Not really considering you need a REALLY good cooler or loop to support OC and HT at the same time.

Your benchmarks do not support the claim. A few FPS is not statistically significant, and in all cases the game is WELL BEYOND playable. The min FPS is also higher on the non-HT scenario (if we're gonna split hairs) which implies more consistent performance, but avg FPS from timedemos is really not how you should assess this kind of thing to really bench it. Just saying. As I've said with audio - if you're gonna be a meter maid, you take the science bit all the way, and interpret the numbers, you don't just throw up a graph and say "this one is better!"

And regarding your claim on the chips being "extremely different" - it is again, inaccurate.

 

[stv014]

Quote:

Uh no.. i3 and i5 do NOT have hyper threading support.

 
This is false, see "Advanced Technologies" here. Also, hyper-threading is a relatively old technology that was already supported by the Pentium 4.

 

[NinjaSushi2]

Oops* lol
 
I stand corrected* guys! 

 Well put arguments gentlemen. I seemed to have been misinformed by that doesn't surprise me by the boozos who taught me.. 

 
Oh well! About sound cards. Best bang 4 buck around 150? And best bang for buck for gaming period.