BF2S Forums Pros and Cons of a sound card??

CackNBallz wrote:

I can tell you from firsthand experience that it increases your framerate.  Sound takes up a lot of processing resources away from the CPU, especially in this game when there are tons of voice-overs, preprogrammed voice communications, VoIP, and the normal sound effects from weapons, vehicles and area you're in (like in the docks where the boats are, or in warehouses you have an echo effect of everything outside.)

If you have a soundcard (or an above average onboard soundcard) you'll be better off anyways as you will get superior sound and better gameplay performance overall.

The only con I can think of is that you will have to buy it and install the hardware on your computer.  Difficulty for this is 0.5 out of a scale of 10.  Just plug the soundcard into a PCI slot, turn on the computer, install drivers.

if have got a 7.1 surround sound cart.. :p dont know if it is any good because my graphics card sucks.. need to buy a new one..

Ya, I have a Sound Blaster, 24-bit, it's pretty good, even when on high... but it gets scratchy on CoD2...

atlvolunteer wrote:

[snip]
I have also read that the latest cards from Creative (X-FI) have tremendous positional sound.  They use something to convert 7.1 to work on a pair of headpones.  However, you're going to spend over $100 for one of these, pluse you'd need to get a good headset on top of that.

I have the "low-end" model of the new Creative X-FI Cards (the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic) which cost me a little more than ~120$. I can tell you it makes a BIG difference to the onboard 5.1-Soundcard I was using before. I use regular headphones (some cheap Sony Headphones I bough for 15$) and the positinal sound etc is phenomenal.
It's because of the EAX 5.0 support this card has and that the card can render 128 Audiosources simultaneously. There's also models that have additional onboard memory (much like memory on your gfx card) which helps distribute the load the game puts on the system. I've read somewhere that a system with an X-FI card with 64 Megs of Ram had a 15% higher framerate than the same system using a Realtek-Onboard-Chip.

The only downside of this cards (and generally with Creative stuff) is that there are a couple creative programs running in the background.

If you don't bother about that and have the money I would seriously recommend getting a card of the X-FI series even if it's just the "low-end" model (as it is the one I have )

Hope this helps a bit

Last edited by AD_Kensan (2005-12-03 11:16:01)

I found what for card i have: i have an Soundblaster live 24-bit! 7.1 surround:D.. but dont know if it is any good.. was a quiet cheap card:p

ok i have one of the cheaper soundblasters but when i go to setting it won't run hardware only software. which do i need to run hardware and is it better?

yeah but the soundblaster live isn't supported for hardware use.     

unless i am wrong that makes it useless in BF2

Soundblaster LIve is supported for HW use.

Don't forget to install the SB drivers (not the XP builtin drivers) because else you will have a lot off crackling going on.

I now have the X-fi with the medusa 5.1. Awesome sound if you set it up right.

Now I have to sort out some lagproblems with X-fi and BF2, but I thing a fresh windows install with the newest SB X-fi drivers will do the trick.