[mmmmcheese]

I did a search for this to no avail but can the 404 handle gaming oris it just ment for pro audio stuff?

 

[Aman]

It can HANDLE gaming, but it's a 2 channel card and I believe it doesn't have support for that gaming standard that Creative has (whatever it is) E-something-X 3 ?

My M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card is almost the exact same card (but better IMO) and I can say that soundstage wise it's a good card, and for music it's great.

But to get good audio quality you will have to sacrifice some of your ability to hear the bullets whizzing by you.

 

[kalzone]

don't know about the 0404 but with my 1212m i've had so-so success getting it to work properly with games. mind you, you'll get plain jane stereo sound like the above person mentioned.
the problems that i've had with my 1212m would include the sound going mute after a few minutes of playing a game (ie: Doom3, Neverwinter Nights).
it has really been a toss-up for me. i'm playing knights of the old republic 2 and i haven't had any sound issues with it.

 

[Rempert]

It has reasonable support for DirectSound, so it's not like some of the professional cards that don't work for gaming at all. You won't get any special hardware-accelerated effects. But for basic stereo without effects, it should work with nearly all new games and of course sound better than onboard sound.

I wouldn't reccommend it as a gamer's card, but if you are getting it for music listening or production it will probably be OK for gaming too.

 

[Mevunky]

I found about 1 in 10 games wouldnt work without some trouble and another 1 in 15 wouldnt work at all no matter what I did.

I found two channel with high quality nicer, vs the multichannel A2 personally.

 

[stiben]

Like many others I use the mobo onboard sound as the default for Windows/games, connected to the analog input of my 1212M.

Foorbar and music production software are setup to use the 1212M directly.

Best of both worlds, other than running an Audigy2 as the gaming card.

 

[SDA]

IME, it will work well enough with most games, but it takes more effort to set up than, say, an Audigy 2. Mevunky's description seems more or less accurate, although if you have the cut-out problem you'll have to change some things (well, PCI Latency) to get almost anything working.

Personally, I'm satisfied with it for games, but I'm not the heavy gamer I used to be. If you play a lot of games, I would definitely recommend doing what stiben said.

 

[Enverxis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aman It can HANDLE gaming, but it's a 2 channel card and I believe it doesn't have support for that gaming standard that Creative has (whatever it is) E-something-X 3 ? My M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card is almost the exact same card (but better IMO) and I can say that soundstage wise it's a good card, and for music it's great. But to get good audio quality you will have to sacrifice some of your ability to hear the bullets whizzing by you.

i have a 1212m and i prefer it for gaming over my old audigy card. Better Soundstage and better 2D imaging instead of EAX hogwash

and ive NEVER had a problem with it, its drivers or any game (Windows XP SP1)

 

[Helter Skelter]

Likewise as Enverxis, I've had no problems with games at all with my 0404. Sure, it's just plain stereo sound, but a nice wide soundstage more than makes up for the lack of silly reverb effects. Haven't encountered any compatability problems as yet, and I've tried a lot of games. My laptop's onboard sound, which actually does support EAX, has more problems (crackling and popping, usually).

 

[mattpwill]

Make sure you have a good clean install of Windows, and a nice 6600GT graphics card (comes with low 24ms latency as default), and you'll have no troubles. I use Soundstorm optical to the 0404 which enables A3D 2.0, and EAX 3.0 (soon, Creative released the code)

 

[maarek99]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helter Skelter My laptop's onboard sound, which actually does support EAX, has more problems (crackling and popping, usually).

Sensaura supported EAX is always ******. Even the first Live gives better EAX effects (reverb is considerably nicer) and support.

 

[Helter Skelter]

Yeah, honestly I'd rather just turn the EAX stuff off completely if I could. Not an option, unfortunately. Some games give me the option, most don't.