December 23, 200520 yr I have to admit... I used my Z-5200's with my onboard AC'97 sound, but when it crapped out in September I didn't feel like doing the RMA thing so I just bought an Audigy 2. For gaming... WOW... I hear stuff I never really noticed before. I have a real good idea where footsteps are coming from in CS and other games. A small boost in FPS but nothing too considerable... just the sound difference was nice. Besides, the Audigy can kill my 100 Watt sub at night, even at the lowest setting my AC'97 couldn't do that to well.
December 23, 200520 yr Try it in EAX mode. Hardware on High too if you have BF2. With an Audigy2 or 4 or X-FI. The soundcard has the ability to track way more sounds accurately. Imagine in BF2. Gulf Of Oman. 64 players. Artillery coming down. Blackhawk firing above. Attack Copter launching rockets. MEC guys are assulting from both sides and incoming fire is everywhere. The other good way of looking at this is your CPU can do video processing. Look at 3dmark 2003 and 2005. Without a videocard. Your FPS suxorz in CPU mode. So why would you want to be without a soundcard then if you can afford one that is. Some people can't. Now for the question. What do you think is going to process all of this better.? 1. A dedicated sound card designed for this sole purpouse. 2. Software based onboard sound support decoded and run by your CPU. And I also forgot that Optical is not the best for sound. It has limited bandwidth. A coaxial digital input/output system is better but to hear it is near impossible with our hearing. Machines can detect it in wave form but not us. I don't know what you are going to get but do not base your decsion on Optical alone that is for sure.
December 23, 200520 yr Oh yeah, the EAX 4 mode simply rocks. I was never a fan of EAX with the origional Audigy but now that they've improved on it I love it in my games
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