Hey everyone, It's been a while since i've been in the hardware forum. OK, I have posted in the past about a bottle neck in my new system.(see sig below) I just got the new Piper Cheyenne yestersay, and another forum member there was suprised at my performance with my new system. It was worse with the on board sound when new, so I went and got a Turtle Beach Catalina card. It did improve , but I still am not content. Well, tonight, while in the Cheyenne at Fly Tampa KBOS, I was getting a stuttering 17-18fps in VC. I then turned off the sound via the alt menu and it shot up to a smooth 26.9. I have it locked at 27fps. I am now convinced that my audio card is the culprit still. I have tried everything else. Is there an audio card out there with its own processor or something, or anything that will solve my problem, or am I imagining things? I believe this is the last remaining problem before this system is finally where I want it. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks again.

Not sure your gonna like this..he he(expensive)...But the *X-FI Fatal1ty*...It has 64mb of RAM which will lessen the load...http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16829102189Note: There are other X-FI cards that don't have the onboard RAM...X-Fi Fatal1ty does...P.S. Nice System you have...Good Luck..

Thanks Chuck for your reply. I almost got that at Circuit City today. The price is steep, that's for sure. As far as my system, thanks for your compliment, if only I could get it to work as good as it sounds now. I was hoping to find a sound card for a little less $$$ if there is such a card available. If not, Well I started building machine with a $1,200.00 budget for just the box and ended up spending way more. The things we do for flight simulation. I am half tempted to get it tomorrow and see what it does. If it doesn't work, I get hit with a 15% restocking fee. Ouch!

Hey everyone, It seems the card I thought I saw was the lower model. No onboard ram Fatal1ty model. I also noticed that NO ONE has this instock. I wonder if it is poular or too expensive? My main concern is the reviews mention having to have pci 2.1 mother boards. I tried for hours today all over to find out with a dead end. Being I just got my system in May, (See Below) wouldn't it have the lastest, greatest features? I don't want to shell out this kind of cash without knowing first. Any suggestions?

Hi,http://www.compusa.com/products/product_in...ard_with_RemoteHope this helps,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development Team Active Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/AirSource Member: http://www.air-source.us/FSEconomy Member:http://dot.kelder.net:8080/fseconomy/

Jeff,Two thoughts on your sound card issue. The sound card you bought should do just fine as there have been few advances in sound cards for a couple of years. Oh sure, some companies keep adding "features" to send up the price and keep their sales chugging along. By using ATC sound in FS you create a fair amount of effort for the simulator. A good way to test this is to start up the sim at a gate in a busy airport with a lot of traffic like Denver or London Heathrow. Have your traffic set to a high number. Do not call the tower and watch your framerates. Call the tower and do nothing else and you will see a big hit on framerates. Just flying the sim without ATC should not create a problem with your sound card and frame rates.I believe you should check to make sure that1. Your bios has the onboard sound disabled2. You have the correct updated drivers for your sound card. If you have that covered, you are about as good as FS9 will let you be. I doubt it is your sound card. Best of luck with that new rig.

Thanks Guys. I actually don't use ATC at all. My issues are with just the planes and scenery I fly. I just got the new Cheyenne, and that is what made me get focused on this again. I use fair weather/25% AI/Scenery normal/Autogen dense/ So I don't have anything maxed as you can see. I have the latest drivers for the sound card installed, but it is only a $40.00 card. My tech recommended the Sound Blaster Platinum or the Fatality models. He said the Fatality is a waste of money over the Platinum other than the 64mb onboard ram. But he feels I will see improvement in overall performance due to the fact that the cheaper sound cards use alot more resources. I tend to agree with that point. I just really can't believe I started with a $1,200.00 budget and here I am over $1,000.00 more today. I am really keeping my fingers crossed the FSX will run better with the newer systems. This is the last thing I am going to get for this system for a while. I don't think there is much more I can do. Now I just have to see if I can afford to get the sound card at this time. I will post back here and let you know how it worked out, if this could be helpful to anyone else with a similar situation. Thanks again. I hope to have something within a week as I have to order the Fatality as it can't be purchased in the stores. Unless I get something a little bit less pricey. Talk to you soon.

I suspect you error is related to the fact the sound cards you have do not have any 3d hardware sound acceleration. The more sounds get generated the higher the load on your CPU.Currently, despite their absolutely -awful- drivers, Creative Labs EMU10K (Live! and Audigy product lines) and the X-Fi are the best sound cards for 3d acceleration. The only other company that did 3d sound on their own chip was nvidia with the nForce 2.Even the 7.1 (Turtle Beach) sound card with Dolby Digital up-mixing has no 3d sound acceleration.Be aware that Creative Labs makes sound cards -only- for PCI. Make sure you have a spare PCI port.Additionally, the different X-Fi models will bring you no difference. The 64megs of sound RAM is only useful in games that use this feature and -only- to enhance the fidelity of the sounds. It offers no performance improvements.

Hey everyone, OK, here is the results. I ended up purchasing the X-FI platinum sound blaster. What a DISASTER!!!! First off, I got the latest drivers through the automated system. After installing, I noticed with just the bare minimums needed, there was no 10 band EQ as advertised. I checked to make sure I had the software installed correctly. The crackling noises I got some of, with the other card increased alot. No matter what settings, drivers, IRQ..etc..., they would not go away. I checked the forums at creative and saw nothing but a bash fest between the users and the moderators. Total frustration of most users with no answers. My system usage at idle went from 18 processes (99 memory used)to 24 (135)! The gaming mode works worse than entertainment mode. Certain sounds from switches that worked before no longer worked no mater what settings used. I uninstalled the card, used driver cleaner pro twice to remove any lingering files. Now I was getting a DCOM error on boot up in the event viewer. I disabled that because I think it had something to do with the sound blaster. Error gone now. I put my Turtle Beach Catalina back in. Now I'm back to the same as before with system usage. My crackling is still there more than before (I think), but you know what? I paid $40.00 dollars for that card and it works better than the $200.00 card as far as I'm concerned. My only quest is to get a card that will give my crackle-free better smooth performance that takes the load off the CPU. I don't know of any, and after trying a creative product again, I don't like the product in general. I wish there was another maker of audio cards out there besides creative. I don't know how they have a large market share with the problems they have. The moral of the story: Just because something costs more, doesn't mean it will be any better. I learned the hard way, and I hope I save anyone else looking to go down this 2 day, waste of time road. If anyone knows of a good solid card other than sound blaster, it would be much appreciated. Thanks for reading my results.

I, as much of an audiophile as I am, use the included Realtek 850D that comes with my nForce 4 motherboard. Since I use a Denon receiver for my sound system the Mystique 7.1 would be a good choice for me if I ever felt the need to have the dolby digital live (upmixing to 5.1) feature. Review here: http://www.custompc.co.uk/custompc/reviews...ue-71-gold.htmlAs you will note, the reviewer spends most of the time mentioning how terrible the Mystique is compared to the X-Fi system, but as I stated above, Creative Labs writes awful drivers. Unfortunately, there is no other 3d acceleration solution offered for gaming. You either take the CPU hit with on-board sound / sound card or you are blessed to have a perfect X-Fi / Audigy (or Live!, both use the same processor, remember) installation with no crackling.

>...but as I stated above, Creative Labs writes awful>drivers. On what basis are you stating that fact? Are you a driver developer? Have you disassembled their code?

I remember looking at FS audio performance a few years ago using some borrowed parts and there was neglible FS performance difference (as in < 5% FPS difference) between the crappiest of onboard sound solution and the super duper Audigy 2 cards of the day.Save your bucks on sound cards with this title, wait and see if it makes any worthwhile difference when FSX comes out, and then plonk out some cash if it does. Gary

Hey Gary, good point. I wasted alot of time. Unless I see anything that really can help with performance, I will have to wait.

Years of working with their APIs (starting with the SB16) and watching the lovely efforts of their competitors (Adlib) get eaten and have their quality hardware / code absorbed (SB16/32 AWE) into the machine that is Creative Labs. At the time I was first playing with sound I found the competition's (Rolend MT-32 for MIDI performance, Gravis Ultrasound digital sound) offerings surperior. There's a reason the entire Scene always perferred Gravis support over SB32/16 work. Recent disappointment in their quality comes from years of supporting people with EM10K-based devices (Live! and Audigy brands) and varying issues. Most of them around the clicking or popping errors caused by the... rather intense way Creative Labs boards make use of the PCI bus and crashing issues resulting from their driver support. Creative Labs takes a significantly long time to release their drivers (see the recent 1.3 delay issue for the X-Fi hardware) which, I am happy to say, Vista will give them huge negative marks for [1].Note that I do not consider them a bad company, but I do remember their history quite well and the criticism they have earned [2] for the way they market and support their customers. If you wish further evidence of my statement about the quality of their drivers I will offer further information. My opinion comes from years of work fixing and designing systems; thus, I have to research for evidence. =)[1] http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060614-7054.html[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Labs#Criticism

Since I really only use FS, I use the onboard RealTek AC97 sound on my ASUS A8N-E motherboard. It is "adequate". It does cost a few frames, but it's insignificant, imo with FS (what's 35 fps vs. 33 fps. - nothing).For years sound card makers have said card x doesn't cost you fps.Diamond made a sound card called the MonsterSound MX300 years ago, and it "claimed" to have it's own sound processing unit and not drop your frame rates at all. This proved to not be a reality. (heheh).Also back in time, I had a Gravis UltraSound. It was a slick card. I also had an Adlib card, and at the time (1990-92?) it blew me away. I hadn't heard MIDI before. Friend had a Roland and that was amazing at the time.I agree with Loish, Creative tends to write bloated drivers that are feature-rich but not the best in terms of mem overhead. I guess Creative has been aiming over the years to write drivers and associated apps for what people want, and that has been features. To us, for FS, all of that doesn't really matter as FS has by comparison with other titles, pretty basic sound. All we want is something that doesn't have any overhead.FSX supposedly will have true 5.1 sound. Once FSX is out and the dust settles, I may do something else.Rhett