Howdy,
I just built a new rig based on a 3400+ Newcastle, 1 GB Corsair value select, and the Soltek SL-K8AN2E-GR NFORCE3 250 mobo with AC'97 audio.
My speaker set-up consists of two, 2-channel systems so I'm using the front l/r and rear l/r analog outputs. My older comp has a Soundblaster Live! 5.1 card which I could put in this machine, but I'm not sure that's really necessary - especially since it seems that the more modern games are using CPU-based audio decoding.
The Realtek speaker test gives me discrete 4.0, but I don't think Doom 3 does. (I know all the cool kids are playing HL2, but I'm forcing myself to finish D3 before joining that club...) D3 sounds decent, but I don't think I'm really getting 4.0. It's hard to tell, but I think the rears are just mimicking the fronts. Plus, when I try to enable surrounds on the D3 settings screen, I get a "surrounds not detected" error.
So - would my SB Live! 5.1 give me true 4.0 with the analog outs? Would it be worth it to upgrade to an Audigy? What am I really missing out on by using on-board audio?
Thanks!
I just built a new rig based on a 3400+ Newcastle, 1 GB Corsair value select, and the Soltek SL-K8AN2E-GR NFORCE3 250 mobo with AC'97 audio.
My speaker set-up consists of two, 2-channel systems so I'm using the front l/r and rear l/r analog outputs. My older comp has a Soundblaster Live! 5.1 card which I could put in this machine, but I'm not sure that's really necessary - especially since it seems that the more modern games are using CPU-based audio decoding.
The Realtek speaker test gives me discrete 4.0, but I don't think Doom 3 does. (I know all the cool kids are playing HL2, but I'm forcing myself to finish D3 before joining that club...) D3 sounds decent, but I don't think I'm really getting 4.0. It's hard to tell, but I think the rears are just mimicking the fronts. Plus, when I try to enable surrounds on the D3 settings screen, I get a "surrounds not detected" error.
So - would my SB Live! 5.1 give me true 4.0 with the analog outs? Would it be worth it to upgrade to an Audigy? What am I really missing out on by using on-board audio?
Thanks!