I know your pain, Tree. I have a MicroATX-board with an oversized graphics card, all squeezed into a tiny case. Still, I don't want to miss my x-fi for the world. And since there are many options for fitting such cards, I'd still find a solution. It doesn't need a PCIe2.0 x16 bus to benefit from a soundcard. Normal PCI or the MiniPCI does fine.
And if all goes wrong, I'd still prefer am X-FI-USB solution over the onboard chip. ;)

No

But I build and repair PC's, I have loads of old Creative sound cards that I throw away due to the simple fact they no longer work correctly under Vista & Win 7, I can get them to work but the hassle and cost involved in time isn't worth it especially if its shipped out and the customer does a re installation and is left high and dry finding out how to get their sound to work.

As a minimum spec sound card the one I mentioned in my OP is more than adequate.



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The onboard sound on my Asus Crosshair III combines the best of both worlds: a dedicated PCIe audio slot, with a Supreme FX X-Fi soundcard in it. I find the sound to be equal to, if not better than the X-Fi gamer I had in my previous rig.

B

Yep, that is a very good sound card Brando and it does not interfere with any graphics setup.

Hi B

Sold a few of those but be careful I've had some heavy handed customers snap the slot off when they have messed around inside the cases fitting "extras" , then expect it replaced under warranty :(



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Err, what, you're calling me heavy-handed now? Well, I dunno, offer the hand of friendship (the only hand I've got!) and this is what I get......

<wanders off, mumbling>

:D

To counterbalance the first-page naysayer, I'll say I've got a fairly expensive, top-of-the-line sound card (X-Fi Titanium Champion) and a very nice, expensive headset (Sennheisser pc350) and the resident sounds are quite good. They are superior to the mod sounds in their dynamic range and the feedback they provide when engine rpms fluctuate in extreme maneuvers...period.

Can they be better? Sure. Are they cr@p? not hardly.

Well not only the separate sound card as I have that makes the difference but it also frees up more CPU cycles and chip-set bandwidth..

Ive ordered a few of these for stock >> Asus Xonar D2X Sound Cards

Little bit too many led's for my taste but once I have one on demo I'll let you know how they compare to Creative Xfi Titanium pro and Champion series.

A lot of specification for the money, how they sound will be the real deal !!!

http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-xonar-d2x-review/

If you already have one let us know how it performs :)

IL-2 is a old game... the sistem game sound was good in his time, today a higthend motherboard have a good on-board sound cards, be shure.
the true is the game sound engine IL-2 dont have a channel sound for turbo engine, "Fly by view sound" or "low pass sound", sound for games like IL-2 is very hard to do, there is a thing call "acustic", the game must be a "acustic" simulator and this is not easy, in the true, very hard, sometimes you need use a sound to result in game the sound you want, you can see this in low pass videos, is impossible to IL-2 engine sound get close because need more channels sounds.
But i have hope SOW will have a better and modern sounds sistem, sound is a important improvement! but much more hard than looks.