Good EAX sound card / VGA for T2

ticky on 26/6/2009 at 14:34

Hi all!

I need some advice, since I'm using my motherboard sound card for a year now, before that, I used an old but quite good (about 2002) Creative sound blaster, but it was a victim of an accident:P. So, what's the best sound card for T2 nowadays, also, I plan to buy a new VGA card too. I don't want to spend more than 40-50 euros for each card.

bikerdude on 26/6/2009 at 16:04

the following cards are good for eax and thief

all Audigy cards ( but not the audigy 4)
all Xfi cards (but not the xfi extreme audio)

Platinumoxicity on 26/6/2009 at 16:23

Quote Posted by Bikerdude

the following cards are good for eax and thief

all Audigy cards ( but not the audigy 4)
all Xfi cards (but not the xfi extreme audio)

Does X-fi Extreme gamer have the same problem?
If so, again more evidence for the theory that my luck the worst of all. At the time I bought that card among other parts for my PC, the card was the second most expensive piece of hardware that I bought at the time. :( I admit that I have noticed some compatibility problems in some games with it.

bikerdude on 26/6/2009 at 19:00

Quote Posted by Platinumoxicity

Does X-fi Extreme gamer have the same problem?

As I forgot about this one as its a new card and this is the low profile version of the Xtreme music, so thief will run fine along with all other EAX enabled games.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Fi#X-Fi_Xtreme_Gamer)

The Xtreme Gamer is the cheapest "real" X-Fi card on the market.

lost_soul on 26/6/2009 at 21:30

Somebody needs to make an EAX emulator that runs in software.

bikerdude on 26/6/2009 at 23:59

Quote Posted by lost_soul

Somebody needs to make an EAX emulator that runs in software.

i think that eat up a shed load of cpu cycles...:p

inselaffe on 27/6/2009 at 16:04

The thing is, if it's only for thief 2, then motherboard sound should be fine as (assuming you can get it working) your onboard sound very likely supports up to the latest version of eax that thief 2 supports anyway. Can be tricky to get working as intended though.

If you only really want it for thief or older things then you can get an xfi if you really want but unless you can get it cheap then audigy 2 would be fine. Infact audigy 1 would probably be fine too.

Bonusbartus on 27/6/2009 at 16:42

Well first off, If you would want to install vista you can forget about EAX, it just doesn't work unless you buy an Asus Xonar which is reasonably expensive.
Modern onboard soundcards should support eax 1 and 2 without a problem, and I think thief 2 uses EAX2 :)

If you want Eax and stay with windows xp or older I'd buy a Terratec Aureon,
we sell them for €15,90 at work;)
(http://www.computer-cash-carry.de/ccc/index.php?expand=220&showcategorie=221&catname=&menu=11&artid=7800698&list=ben)

as for the VGA card, if your pc has a PCI-E slot I'd buy a geforce 9500, if you mostly play thief, if you plan on buying something bigger you'd have to pay more.... I'd go for a Radeon 4770...
if you have an old AGP slot I don't think there's much to choose from..
I'd go for something like this:
(http://www.computer-cash-carry.de/ccc/index.php?expand=230&showcategorie=231&catname=&menu=11&artid=7924204&list=ben)

bikerdude on 27/6/2009 at 18:37

I forgot about the gfx card , lol - whats yer budget..?

lost_soul on 27/6/2009 at 23:15

I have a SB Live from 8-9 years ago in my XP box and it works well. I bet these SB lives are dirt cheap now.