Recommend Sound Card

I'm hoping someone can recommend a good INEXPENSIVE ($30-$50 range) sound card. I'm happy with my onboard 5 channel sound, but my cpu (athlon xp 3000+) can get overtaxed and garble or even freeze during certain games, including old ones (believe me, I don't have the newest most strenuous games).

So, my main purpose in buying a new sound card would be to keep that from happening, but any improvement in sound would be icing on the cake.

I saw several on tigerdirect.com, but am not sure which ones are best. A couple of people complained that one sound card had software emulation. What is software emulation, what is the difference between boards that have it and that don't, and how can you tell from the specs if a card has it?

Thanks to anyone who can help.

 

I'm not sure a new sound card will solve your problem. It sounds like it could be a memory problem or perhaps you have something running in the background that is taxing you resources.

What is your OS?
How much RAM?
What size HD with how much free space?
Is your processor cooling fan and heatsink clean?
How many services and tsr's are loading and what are they?

 

My OS is windows xp home. I have 512 MB Crucial RAM, but the RAM is never anywhere close to used up when this happens. My hard drive is a WD SATA 120 GB with about 40 GB used.

When it freezes, the game is using 99% of the cpu power. I read in a pc magazine that onboard sound can overtax your cpu during games and that adding an independent sound card can make a huge difference, which makes sense to me since I have a good cpu (athlon xp 3000+), ram and video card (radeon 9800 pro). The sound is the only thing I didn't really invest in. Keep in mind, these are not newest, fastest, most graphics intensive games either. I'm not a huge gamer.

In any case, $30 isn't going to kill me to see if it solves the problem, and I'll have better sound than I do now either way.

So, any suggestions for sound cards? And can anyone answer the software emulation questions?

 

This quote explains the sound/cpu connection (similar to what I read). The bold was added by me:

"Generally speaking: most dedicated soundcards will almost always perform better (both CPU wise and sound quality wise) because there is more hardware devoted for the task at hand (I.E.: producing sound). Comparably: a dedicated sound card has many chips and transistors to create sound, whereas many of the integrated on-board solutions have only 1 chip, few transistors, and often rely on software emulation to produce sound. This causes CPU load and can also degrade the sound experience (and even cause the sound to "stutter")."

I found this info. at http://www.infopackets.com/channels/en/windows/gazette/2005/20050816
_integrated_onboard_sound_versus_dedicated_soundcard.htm

 

I didn't mean to say that it is not your problem although I still don't think so. If you want to try one you can just get an inexpensive one from a computer store. I've always had good luck with the Yamaha chip sound cards.

 

Well, I selected a card today, after some research, which was a little more expensive than I originally had planned.

I will try to follow up, at some point, to say whether this has solved my problem or not.

 

I doubt if it fixes the freezing issue, and I doubt if you will be able to hear the improved quality or notice a performance increase.

Onboard sound has excellent quality, and although dedicated sound cards do sound better, you would have to be an audiophile or have a great set up to notice the difference.

The only sound cards I'm aware of that noticeably remove the load from the CPU are the Creative X-FI, but they aren't $30-$50.


Buying the card isn't a bad move, quite the opposite, but don't be disappointed if it doesn't resolve your issues.

Good luck.

 

There's no guarantee that this will fix it, but the sound skipping and the infrequent freezes seem to coincide with big sound events in the game.

I'm wondering what you suspect is the culprit, if not the sound card. I've run most of my components through benchmark and testing utilites, with no indication of problems.

It's funny that you mentioned the X-Fi cards, because I ended up buying the Xteme Music one for about $100. As I mentioned before I paid more than I originally planned, but felt it was worth it after doing some research on different sound cards.

Anyway, I will try to return with the results later to shed some insight for other people in the future.