suggest a sound card which wont eat up CPU cycles

[aniruddha23]

am using a really old dual p3 700 mhz 1 GB ram system at home for surfing. it used to work really great till I installed a sound card in it. It didn't have one before.

Got this one from newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829130001

problem is that the sound cards using up so much cpu and memory that the PC crawls to a halt. things get back to normal if I disable the sound card and kill mixer.exe

I think if i get a sound card which does a majority of the processing by itself thing will be much better.

which one would be the bare minimum to purchase so that it doesn't take a toll on my PC. am not looking to spend more than $20.

any suggesstions?

 

[happy medium]

I'm confused you said it used to work great? Did you have onboard sound?
If so you must disable the onboard sound in the bios? Your systems trying to run 2 sound sources.

 

[aniruddha23]

sorry for the confusion.

It didn't have any sound card before. nor on board sound. I didn't have any sound capability on that system. so essentially used to work great before I installed that sound card. slows down like crazy after that and reboots without any notice.

I remove the sound card and it works like a champ.

think installing a good sound card may solve the problem. just dont want to spend a fortune on it. maybe craigslist or trades in AT might have something good.

 

[SuperNaruto]

YGPM

 

[fire400]

don't get soundblaster cards 'cuz the software will steal juice from your CPU and other resources.

the more generic the soundcard is the better, but don't get anything too old, otherwise your OS might get sick.

 

[oynaz]

I cannot see why your setup cannot run with that sound card. It must really suck (the card that is). I mean, everything ran fine with a Sound Blaster Live on my Pentium 75 mhz with 16 mb RAM.
Come to think of it, there you have it. Get your hands on a SB Live. They work fine, and you should be able to find one dirt cheap.