What soundcard is best?

[DoolittleRaider]

I've got my new rig...See Specs way down below...

Problem is that I've now discovered, to my great surprise and disappointment, that the supposed 7.1 on-board sound with the GIGABYTE MOBO does not work with Windows 7, when it comes to driving a 5.1 Speaker setup. Sooo, I now need to add a Sound card. It seems I need a card with the Green, Black, and Gold connectors/cables to Z506 subwoofer/system.

I am looking for recommendations on best card, for gaming (ClOD and RoF and Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, etc)....

I want best 5.1 surround sound.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!


i7-3770K 3.50 GHz 8MB LGA1155
16GB (4GBx4) DDR3/1600MHz Dual Channel
GIGABYTE Z77-DS3H, 7.1 HD Audio On-Board
NVIDIA GeForce GTX680 4GB
MONITOR: ASUS VS247H-P 24" LCD

SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
SPEAKERS: Logitech Z506, 5.1 system

240GB Corsair SSD
2TB 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

LG 12X Blu-ray Drive & DVDRW, 3D Playback
NZXT Switch 810 Hybrid Full Tower Gaming Case
CyberPower Xtreme Hydro Liquid Cooling Kit

Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Cooler Master Power Supply 1050 Watts

[priller26]

I've got a soundblaster titanium xfi 5.1, works great with a set of nice 5.1 headphones I have, Im sure you could spend more, but I dont think you will hear anything different, the higher end cards have some better studio and recording options, as well as a case plug in, but, I don't think its worth the money.

[Brimstone]

Hi Doolittleraider,

I'm new on here after finally deciding to buy COD and actually learn how to fly properly. I've been using flight sims on and off for the past 15 years, mostly flying A-10's. I was just wondering how you are getting on with your new PC? I'm in the market for a new one as mine is 5 years old thought I upgraded it with a 1Gb 6850 graphics card last year. Did you buy it off the shelf from Cyberpower and is it handling COD at maximum settings? Thanks

[DoolittleRaider]

Hi Doolittleraider,

I'm new on here after finally deciding to buy COD and actually learn how to fly properly. I've been using flight sims on and off for the past 15 years, mostly flying A-10's. I was just wondering how you are getting on with your new PC? I'm in the market for a new one as mine is 5 years old thought I upgraded it with a 1Gb 6850 graphics card last year. Did you buy it off the shelf from Cyberpower and is it handling COD at maximum settings? Thanks

Yes...I bought my Rig 'off the shelf' from Cyberpower, sort of...Cyberpower offers an extensive variety of options for every component, so one can 'customize' as one likes, and in accordance with one's pocketbook. It turns out that I did not have to buy a Soundcard, I just needed to correctly Set up the Realtek HD Audio Manager software. [My MOBO, in fact, did have the Green, Black, and Gold output connectors/cables to my Z506 speaker system]. I can't recall what I was originally doing wrong...but after a lot of troubleshooting and experimenting, I finally got it to work. It should not have been difficult, at all..it was my mistakes that were causing my problem.

From all my research, it appears that the consensus these days is that a Soundcard is not necessary for Gaming...maybe for other sophisticated Music-making, whatever, a Soundcard is necessary.

Yes, I run COD (and Rise of Flight) at maximum settings with no problems whatsoever at 1920X1080. I don't know how to determine if my 16GB of RAM or my 4GB GTX680 graphics card is most key to this performance.

BTW, Cyberpower Tech support has been Excellent. Very helpful in all manner of PC software and hardware questions, beyond simply those specifically Cyberpower component related.

[Brimstone]

Thanks for the advice on cyberpower, I'll take a look at them and tinker with customizing a PC. I'm no expert but I read somewhere that COD only uses a mamimum of 2.6 GB of ram at anyone time? Not sure if they mean the GPU ram? Anyway your new rig looks very future proof.