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IMO, if you like something like that, participate in it. I have nothing against the activity itself it's just that it seems mindless and boring to watch someone else do. Like watching someone paint or a crew doing construction.

The difference is, sports is just people being competitive. Music and movies are about telling a story with emotional connections you can relate to. Which is why most people have favorite genre's they enjoy. There's a huge difference in being actively competitive versus watching other people being competitive. The latter is useless.

OMG he dropped the ball... OMG he hit the ball... useless.

Archi doesn't understand the magic of tailgating.

I don't either. I've never understood the fascination people have with sports. To me, there's just something odd in watching other people do things that you could do. Much like watching other people play video games.

/threadcrap

Yea, and they made it easier to get exclusive control of the sound card, WASAPI so the Windows Mixer doesn't mess with your audio either.

Guily, the one you linked to is the OPA627 by Burr Brown. That's actually the one I was talking about, the real ones are about $20-$30 per chip and you need 2 for stereo. I would guess that for 7.1, you would need 7 of them which would be approaching $200. For that price, you can buy a discrete DAC that would beat the whole sound card.

Also, there may be good opamps and caps on the card but it still comprimises with the DAC since the DAC has to output multichannel, they can't use a good DAC chip setup for the best dynamic range. With current tech, it's pretty easy to get 128 or 129 DB in SNR and dynamic range yet your card is rated 98-115 DB depending on output.

For a 1FPS gain, spend 20 seconds and overclock your CPU/Memory/GPU 5-10% and you'll see more gain than you would with the sound card. Creative is getting left in the dust, all of their hardware features can be done faster and better in software with OpenAL. Other companies like Rapture are leading that front.

I used to have a Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer that I had modified with better opamps and capacitors along with a few other mods that cleaned up the signal path. It was fine and in some older games it was nice to have the extra EAX effects. But, looking back, I don't regret getting rid of it. Modern games have great software-based sound outputs that make you feel completely immersed. IMO what matters most is the speakers/headphones you use, without good ones, it doesn't matter if you use motherboard sound or have a $500 dedicated DAC, it's still going to sound like shit

Well all of them also use latest high quality SMD just like that card...

I have an Auzentech Forte 7.1 PCIexpress and it also uses high quality smd's and u can also upgrade them, so you can upgrade the sound card quality without even having to solder...

You mean OPAMPs, not SMDs. A SMD is just a surface mounted (soldered) device, it could be a capacitor, resistor or semiconductor.

OPAMPs aren't good for audio. There are higher quality ones that cost about $30 a piece but they're not really worth it. OPAMPs were designed as part of the semiconductor revolution, where things were constantly getting smaller. OPAMPs are great in that they are smaller than 0.5x0.5" when compared to a circuit board full of discrete components that might be several square inches in surface area. They also use less voltage and can operate in extreme environments. But, for audio quality, they just can't compare to a fully discrete circuit. Which is why high end audio devices don't have them at all.

I won't even get into the crappy power supplies in computers (even the $200 ones, they're still of the switching variety), grounding issues and EMI/RFI. An external discrete DAC will blow any sound card out of the water.

For sound processing (including onboard memory), it's really not necessary these days. It was a neat idea back for Pentium 4's in 2005 or so when you needed every extra bit of CPU power possible so X-Fi offloaded that to the sound card and it did help but these days, I don't think any modern game made in the last 2-3 years takes advantage of X-Fi moreso than old games like BF2 or AA (which didn't take full advantage of it anyway). Modern games just use the CPU and a little bit of system RAM because it's a lot more flexible (everybody has them) of a system and with multiple CPU cores, 10% load on one core for sound doesn't really matter.

/rant

Tearing is painfully obvious in AA. V-Sync isn't the issue here anyway. Your monitor itself, the logic board in it, can only refresh 60 times a second (unless you have a 120hz TV as a monitor or you're playing at a lower resolution which would allow 75hz on some monitors). You are not getting any more FPS. Your GPU can render thousands of frames per second but only 60 are picked up and displayed by your monitor. Thus, it's pointless to have any higher.

I don't really find K&N worthwhile unless you're an offroader and buy one for your 4x4 vehicle. I mean, for small engines it's cheaper and easier just to buy a new filter.