Soundblaster Audigy 2 (PCI)

Extrinsic · 19 Feb 2021

I built a PC on an extremely tight budget from a used Dell Optiplex 790. New PSU, RAM, SSD, GTX 570 and a PCI Audigy 2.
I'm planning on building a better system on an ASUS Z87-K MOBO, GTX 1660 Ti, i5 4670K, and am wondering if using the PCI Audigy 2 would cause a bottleneck due to the PCI BUS or if this sound card would still provide the benefits of a discreet sound card?

Also, does anyone know of a inexpensive PCIe Audio Accelerator that I might consider to replace my PCI Aud2 assuming I should replace it?

I'm hoping to be told that sound requirements don't really need more than PCI provides...?

file3456 · 21 Feb 2021

I wouldn't think a sound card would be a bottleneck at all. In fact, years ago it was the thing to have a dedicated sound card to off load IO from the CPU and motherboard.

If you don't need sound card stuff, then the mother board default audio should suffice.

Extrinsic · 23 Feb 2021

I'm old school and I will always favor a discreet hardware card over built-in mobo HW. I intend to get a PCIe NIC when I upgrade my mobo because I like saving my CPU cycles for games and such. Beyond that, I've never had onboard sound that was worth a crap...there are always pops and hisses not to mention onboard sound rarely supports higher sound quality options.

I just didn't know if a pci soundcard could keep up with modern systems or not. The last desktop computer I built (circa. 2007) used AGP 4x rather than PCIe. The mobo I'm looking at (ASUS Z87-K) only has 2xPCIe 1x slots and one of those will be blocked by my videocard and I think a PCIe NIC would be more beneficial to have than a SC, so if I can use the PCI SC than that's ideal in this instance.

iko22 · 24 Feb 2021

In short, if you only have one peripheral connected to a PCI bus, then there will be no bottleneck and, if you like the sound of the Audigy 2 card, then you should not experience any problem.

You can always run LatencyMon software on your existing system/the new system + built-in sound chip/ and the new system + Audigy 2, and compare results. LatencyMon software checks the computer for possible audio drop-outs.

The PCIe is on a different bus and has higher bandwidth than the PCI standard, meaning more devices can be connected and run seamlessly without experiencing bottlenecks.

The Asus Z87-K also has 2 x PCIe x 16 slots. You use the PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 for the graphics card, and you can use the spare PCIe 2.0 x16 slot for a x1 sound card. Then you can use the spare PCIe x1 for the remaining NIC card.