Got a new PC for Christmas.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+
2Gigs DDR2 SDRAM
250GB HD
256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro
Sound Blaster X-Fi
20" Widescreen LCD

That's about all that matters. I've noticed a serious increase in performance, especially load times, in some games. Considering that I was playing Oblivion decently with my old Radeon 9700 TX, i'm not too worried about it.

You've got me terribly beat in every aspect except HD and monitor..I might need to upgrade sometime next year.

The video card is going to be a real bottleneck.

I know. However, it's at least 50(ish)% better than my old card, which alongside lesser specs could run Oblivion decently. Not too worried.

Where's the X1300 Pro stand in the realm of X8** cards? There's so many out there that I've lost track..

[QUOTE=Commander 598]Got a new PC for Christmas.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+
2Gigs DDR2 SDRAM
250GB HD
256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro
Sound Blaster X-Fi
20" Widescreen LCD

That's about all that matters. I've noticed a serious increase in performance, especially load times, in some games. Considering that I was playing Oblivion decently with my old Radeon 9700 TX, i'm not too worried about it.[/QUOTE]

Got me beat in the graphics card area, by a hell of a lot.

It's between a 9600 pro and XT.


My rig right now is as follows:

X1800XT
Opteron 165 at 2.4 GHz.
2 GB DDR 400
Audigy 2
A8n SLI Premium


It won't compete with the rich folks with SLI rigs, but it does a good job for my needs.

Ah, ok. I have (Dell 4700):

P4 3.0Ghz w/HT
1.5Gb DC DDR2
PCI Express Radeon X800XL 256mb
400Gb SATA Seagate 7200.10
160Gb SATA Seagate 7200.7
Onboard sound

It does the job..I'd like to get a 'real' sound card, though.

Heh, yeah, I once had a Dell with onboard sound so crappy UT '99 refused to run. Even worse it sounded all staticy half the time. It was craptacular.

Everything runs fine (HL2, Oblivion, etc)...but now you've got me wondering what I'm missing...it's been about a year since I had a system with a dedicated sound card..perhaps I'll have to snag an Audigy2 one of these days.

Audigy 2's have gotten pretty cheep. It's worth it, especially if you have speakers even approaching decent.

I had an Audigy 2 in my last one. Thought about skipping the X-Fi...for a second.

AMD 4400+ x2
2GB RAM
2x 7800GTX in SLI
2x WD Raptor 74GB in RAID
500GB Hitachi
200GB WD
Creative X-Fi Fatality
Lightscribe DVD Burner

Got it about a year ago.

I have an Audigy 2 Value in mine. I see no reason to upgrade.

still waiting for vista to restandardize the pc industry before i build a rig

Athlon XP 3000+
1 GB PC3200
Radeon 9700 @ 380/292 MHz
Audigy 2
E-MU 1212m

WD Raptor 70GB
WD Caviar 120 GB
Maxtor 300 GB SATA
Seagate 200 GB IDE
645 GB total storage


The digital out on my Audigy 2 runs to the digital in on my E-MU 1212m, so I get high quality output from the 1212m and can still play games with EAX, yay.

But EAX only works on the direct lines, not SPDIF...

Holy crap, you guys have loads of HD space...

Athlon 64 3500+
Asus A8N-SLI
1 GB DDR400
Seagate 7200.9 160 GB SATA II
Seagate 7200.10 320 GB SATAII
XFX GF 7950 GT 512 MB
Dell 1907FP

I have an Audigy 2 but I pulled it because it was causing problems. I also had a Dell 2007WFP for a short time in addition to the 1907FP, but I returned it. Planning on getting an LG L204WT (20" WS) to replace it.

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]But EAX only works on the direct lines, not SPDIF...[/QUOTE]
Yes it does. It just doesn't output more than two channels. EAX is just a software library for 3D effects. I'm not sure where this impression that it has anything to do with surround sound comes from.

AMD does DDR2 now?

I feel less special.

They have for a while--and DDR2 is no faster than DDR (at the moment).

Because that's what they use to create surround effects in games? (Point in fact> Jedi Outcast)

EAX is just environmental effects like reverb, etc. It also does (although not very well) simulated 3D audio for headphones or stereo speakers. The actual 3D sound positioning, like what would create the sound for five channels in a 5.1 system, is done through DirectSound3D or OpenAL.

You're probably thinking of how the Audigy 2 can't output more than two channels via SPDIF because it doesn't encode to DTS or DDL on the fly. Note however that it can still output all channels through SPDIF if the source audio is already encoded, like on a DVD. It just can't encode the discrete channels on the fly, like in games.

Then explain why Jedi Outcast is in full surround sound when EAX is activated.

I think it has to do with the fact that Lucasarts has a prepared software archive that supports surround sound via EAX to work with the THX standards. Though I could be wrong.

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]Then explain why Jedi Outcast is in full surround sound when EAX is activated.[/QUOTE]


Are you using digital? Maybe your speakers are doing something with them. The Audigy 2 is physically incapable of encoding more than 2 digital channels.

You post had nothing to do with mine...

Jedi Outcast + EAX = 5.1 Surround.

Digital (SPDIF) out will never give you more than 2 channel unless it's gonna be DTS or Dolby.

My new Rig

Processor
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Processor 4600+
Dual-core 64-bit processor with AMD64 Technology
(2.4GHz, 2000MHz FSB, 2 x 512KB L2 cache)

Chipset
NVIDIA® GeForce® 6100 (Crush51)

Memory
2048MB dual-channel DDR2 (2 x 1024MB), 533Mhz (PC4200), *1024MB(i'm dropping the 512 stick that I have now so I can just get another dual-channel)

Hard Drive
320GB SATA II (7200rpm, 8MB cache)7
*160GB

Optical Drives
16x multiformat dual-layer DVD±RW drive

Video
PNY VCG7900SXPB GeForce 7900GS 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Hopefully I can get an SLI up with the board that i'm getting.

Interfaces
7 USB 2.0 ports (2 in front, 1 in Digital Media Manager™, 4 in back)
VGA external connector
2 IEEE 1394 port (2 in front)
Parallel port
2 PS/2 ports (keyboard and mouse)
8 audio ports (2 in front, 6 in back)

Expansion Slots
Expansion Bays Total
1 - PCI-E x16
1 - PCI-E x1
2 - PCI

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]Then explain why Jedi Outcast is in full surround sound when EAX is activated.[/QUOTE]
I don't know. It could just be coded to enable surround only when EAX is enabled. Could have to do with how they used OpenAL. I don't know, I haven't programmed much with audio. Wikipedia on EAX.

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]Digital (SPDIF) out will never give you more than 2 channel unless it's gonna be DTS or Dolby.[/QUOTE]
Right. It will still output EAX through it, though. EAX is done on the DSP chip, before any analog or digital output stages. They would actually have to intentionally break it for that to happen.

You can test it yourself, if you have something that takes SPDIF. Try another game that uses EAX, try it enabled and disabled. Older games that use only EAX 1.0 or 2.0 will make it more noticeable, since reverb was used more often, because it was one of the few effects they had.

To be more specific about EAX, it basically is an occlusion library for sound. Environmental effects like echoes, reverb and doppler are all handled by DirectSound3D.

The sound code in JO was written by Creative. That's their gig: they do it for free or help finance part of the game, and in exchange they get good hardware support and press. Or, in another specific case, they managed to cheat and lie their way into getting a patent for one of John Carmack's rendering algorithms, so it was pretty much a "Let us implement EAX or we won't let you release Doom 3".

At any rate, a part of EAX is automatically detecting and using the Creative Audio Console's speaker settings, and id engines have always been :downs: at handling sound. Enabling it just turns on the correct behavior. EAX is nothing special and it won't even work in Vista.

Tetris!

Dunno about ingame stuff, but EAX effects outside of the games work fine in the latest Creative Vista drivers.

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]Dunno about ingame stuff, but EAX effects outside of the games work fine in the latest Creative Vista drivers.[/QUOTE]
That's because those aren't "EAX effects", the Creative usermode driver is just setting a DirectSound3D environmental effect.

The only "EAX effect" is the muffled sound you get when someone shoots a gun in another room.

Yeah, A3D was always better for positional audio. Still, it helps and is better than nothing. Supposedly A3D tech will *finally* make it into the next versions of EAX.