Solved Ancient Soundcard - lady in distress

[lady]

Your motherboard only has one PCIe slot. The new sound card is a PCIe card and your video card is a PCIe card. Two cards but only one compatible slot so one has to go. I think I would put the video card back in, enable the motherboards on-board 5.1 sound card, and install the matching driver for it. Then see if you can do what you want to do with that setup.

I understand what you are saying about the motherboard only having one suitable slot but I have to weigh up which is most important, sound or graphics. Both are but I can't use Cakewalk Sonar with the SB Live 5.1 as it was so old that I couldn't get the W7 driver for it. That is why I bought the Creative X-Fi titanium as it works great and mostly uses ASIO drivers for Sonar. The guy in the shop checked the fitting on the internet and showed me the picture before ordering and it should have been ok, but when it was delivered the fitting had been updated for W7.
Should I have ordered the soundcard for XP and then downloaded a suitable driver for W7 or am I barking up the wrong tree? That way I could use both slots of my motherboard and all would be great.

In one of your posts you listed the motherboard as a P4VM890,
ASRock > Products > P4VM890
Looking under the product specifications it lists, Realtek ALC653 5.1 channel AC'97 audio codec, for audio. It already has a sound card built into it, you don't need to add one. Assuming you can get a windows 7 driver that is. My suggestion was to turn it on, enable it in BIOS, and see if it will work with your programs. You would need to remove the other add-in sounds cards to do this. If you do that you may as well put the other video card back in.
If the on-board sound won't work with your programs then its back to plan "B". Buy a PCI sound card or maybe even replace the motherboard. I believe you can also buy USB connectible sound cards. As mentioned though, finding a good driver for the on-board video may improve it.

Can't get the driver for the onboard video card and already bought the new soundcard (SB X-Fi titanium) so don't want to get an external one.
The built in soundcard you mentioned doesn't work with Sonar which is why it had a SB Live 5.1. Everything worked fine in XP but now mucho problemas!!!!

Thanks for your time though.

 

[lady]

Asus is great.. Ive used and still use boards and videocards
You might have to count on DDR3 ram too if you switch boards
But that's it.. the videocard, soundcard and disks or drives of any kind that you have now will work on a new board

When using XP I only had 1 gig of ram and a fairly small hard drive, so at the same time as changing to W7 I got a new hard drive (500GB small by todays standards but good enough for me.) Also made it 2.00 GB ram.

Sorry to ask but does DDR3 ram the same as I am talking about above or is it something different. If it's the same can the guy just put an extra 1 GB into the new Motherboard?

You said feel free to ask - so I am - bet you wish you hadn't said that now. LOL

 

[WolfSoul]

No worries lol
if you don't switch boards you wouldn't need the DDR3 and yes you could see to add more
RAM = Random Acces Memory lol

 

[alphanumeric]

Can't get the driver for the onboard video card and already bought the new soundcard (SB X-Fi titanium) so don't want to get an external one.
The built in soundcard you mentioned doesn't work with Sonar which is why it had a SB Live 5.1. Everything worked fine in XP but now mucho problemas!!!!

Thanks for your time though.

OK, sometimes an add-in sound card is used because "it's assumed" the on-board sound sucks, or it just doesn't work. You don't know until you ask.
To be fair, the problems aren't directly related to moving on to Windows 7. It's more to do with old hardware not getting updated drivers. IMHO Creative is one of the worst companies in this respect. They take forever, if they ever, update any drivers for their sound cards. It seems they'd rather just make a new model and force you to upgrade to it. At least thats the way it seems to me.
Another option would be to get a PCI Video card, but for the same price you could likely just get a new motherboard with 2 PCIe slots.

 

[WolfSoul]

I have an X-Fi.. it works fine in 7
But yes.. that is exactly the problem with that board.. no updated drivers

 

[lady]

No worries lol
if you don't switch boards you wouldn't need the DDR3 and yes you could see to add more
RAM = Random Acces Memory lol

Are you saying DDR3 is just a motherboard that has slots for 3 GB ram? I knew what ram meant but not the DDR bit. Doesn't tell me in my 'W7 Dummies Book.'
Any idea what motherboard I should go for and approx cost? If I don't know what I'm looking for I can't look it up and find out the approx price. Just want to make sure that I don't get ripped off by the guy in the shop.

Thanks

 

[alphanumeric]

No it has nothing to do with the size of the RAM in gigabytes. It has to do with the type of RAM modules supported by the motherboard. There is DDR, DDR2, and DDR3, and one is not compatible with the other. You can't put DDR3 RAM in a motherboard with slots for DDR2. You also have to look up the specs for the motherboard to see what the maximum amount of supported RAM is and what size of module can go in any one slot.

 

[seavixen32]

Definition of DDR3 RAM: DDR3 SDRAM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[WolfSoul]

I'd say get one that has at least 2 PCI-E slots.. but most these days do anyway
P67 are quite popular for boards... ok I must be getting old.. new board would also mean new CPU (processor)
As for a cost I'll have a look.. but mind you if you do buy new board etc you will last quite longer than what with you have now
I think the P4 are extinct..
I'd go from min 2 GB RAM to at least 4

 

[WolfSoul]

Ok so I checked quick in my store.. Im in belgium and the cheapest P67 would be the P8P67-LE (if you got for asus) which is down here about 91 Euro, other models go from 110 or 126 to 170
As for memory (like the guys explained there DDR3 is a generation/type) I just bought 12 GB myself for 68, mind you that's for trichannel (boards with 6 slots for RAM) so you wouldn't need that much

 

[lady]

Problem Solved

This problem is now solved thanks to your good advice.

Well Done and thanks

Lady