I'm running Windows 7 x64. Currently for sound I have an Audigy 2 with 5.1 analogue speakers. This doesn't work as well as I'd like and I wonder if there's a newer card with good Windows 7 drivers that supports 5.1 analogue out? Any help appreciated.
Check the Asus Xonar line. The ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 Channels PCI Express x1 is a great value at approx $89 USD.
The HT Omega Striker 7.1 is another excellent card, that supports Win 7, 64 bit. HT Omega - Striker7.1
The Soundblaster Xfi Fatal1ty series are very good but they are PCIe, not PCI. The older Xfi PCI models will work but some have been troublesome.
Thanks for the replies. I have both a PCI and a PCI-e slot that I could use for a sound card. Is there any advantage one way or the other?
i have the creative x-fi titanium fatality championship edition pci-e, its a wicked card, pricey but worth every penny imo!
I recently (back in December) installed a PCIe Xfi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion. It does work good but there needs to be a 5 1/4" slot (CD/DVD drive slot) to install the I/O box. If the user does not have an open "drive" slot it's not a good option.
If I recall, because it doesn't use the bus, but instead is a high speed serial system, it runs not only faster but uses less system resources.
Quote from Wikipedia:
PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe (or PCI-E, as it is commonly called), is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP standards. PCIe 2.1 is the latest standard for expansion cards that is available on mainstream personal computers.[1]
PCI Express is used in consumer, server, and industrial applications, as a motherboard-level interconnect (to link motherboard-mounted peripherals) and as an expansion card interface for add-in boards. A key difference between PCIe and earlier buses is a topology based on point-to-point serial links, rather than a shared parallel bus architecture.
The PCIe electrical interface is also used in a variety of other standards, most notably the ExpressCard laptop expansion card interface.
Conceptually, the PCIe bus can be thought of as a high-speed serial replacement of the older (parallel) PCI/PCI-X bus.[2] At the software level, PCIe preserves compatibility with PCI; a PCIe device can be configured and used in legacy applications and operating systems which have no direct knowledge of PCIe's newer features. In terms of bus protocol, PCIe communication is encapsulated in packets. The work of packetizing and depacketizing data and status-message traffic is handled by the transaction layer of the PCIe port (described later). Radical differences in electrical signaling and bus protocol require the use of a different mechanical form factor and expansion connectors (and thus, new motherboards and new adapter boards).
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