New Sound Card
 

I have a Creative Xi-fi Xtreme gamer sound card right now, but it is slowly dying. The first thing was a constant 0.05 watt signal being sent to my speakers at all times. Now I am having problems with microphone. From time to time the sound quality of my microphone takes a drastic hit. I have ruled out everything else but the card its self.

I have $30 to spend on a new sound card. Is there anyone else aside from creative that makes a good sound card for $30 or less?

Re: New Sound Card
 

If your budget is limited to 30 bucks you can probably use onboard sound and won't notice much of a difference to whichever soundcards are available at that price. The quality of onboard chips has improved quite a bit over the years.

Re: New Sound Card
 

The board I have came with on-board sound, but I cannot get the supplied drivers to work with it. The installer cannot detect the on-board sound chip.

Re: New Sound Card
 

Maybe it is disabled in BIOS? Or maybe the drivers of the Creative card are causing some sort of problem. Enabling both on-board sound and having a sound card plugged in doesn't always work well.

Re: New Sound Card
 

You could try the Asus Xonar DG for that price.
Sure beats onboard sound, but if you can come up with the extra $20 I'd look for an OB Xonar DX from newegg or ebay

Re: New Sound Card
 

Yeah, I was going to recommend a Xonar as well. I was debating between a D2X and an Auzentech Forte for a while, but wasn't too keen on the floppy power connector (?!) so I went with the Forte. From what I've seen though, the DG is a nice sound card.

Re: New Sound Card
 

It needs external power aside from the PCIe 1x because it has a built-in amp

Re: New Sound Card
 

I know why it needs power, I just don't get why it has to be floppy of all things. Why not SATA instead? Something that's not ten years old. According to ASUS it's because it's not the right type (knew specifics when I read it, can't remember), but...

Re: New Sound Card
 

The way I look at it, cheap sound cards are more likely to have driver issues and aren't much better if at all than onboard sound, esp if your MB has HD audio. Expensive sound cards still have driver and other issues are are far from being a receiver, which you can get for a little more. There's some great deals on receivers in the $150-$170 range this time of year.

Re: New Sound Card
 

At that price range there wont be a huge difference.

Ignoring the D2X (as afaik it's out of your price range) the Asus Xonar range of sound cards are great value

Re: New Sound Card
 

I'm going to have to mirror what others have said. All the boards I've ever used have realtek 88x or 89x HD audio chipsets, and I think realtek's onboard sound chipsets are very nice, especially if you have the variants with digital out and/or HDMI out.