Although I use a PCI SB Live! 5.1 for my soundcard, is the soundstorm Nv2 on my motherbaord better? I'd rather have a second opinion before I start swapping it all round.

AMD Athlon XP 1.8GHz
512MB RAM
120GB HDD SATA
12GB HDD IDE
GeForce 4 Ti4600 128MB
Pioneer DVD/RW
SB Live! 5.1
ABIT NF-7S Rev 2 Motherboard

Aside from possibly driver support, soundstorm is better.

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"

I don't think there has been a driver update for my SB Live! for about 2 years, where as there has just been an nforce 2 chipset driver release.

You've swayed me, cheers!

AMD Athlon XP 1.8GHz
512MB RAM
120GB HDD SATA
12GB HDD IDE
GeForce 4 Ti4600 128MB
Pioneer DVD/RW
SB Live! 5.1
ABIT NF-7S Rev 2 Motherboard

Audigy still beats both for gaming though...

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"

if you want EAX effect, keep the sound blaster. i always keep my SB cuz of the EAX effect.

P4 3.2GHZ
kingstone 1GB DDR 3200
ABIT AS8 mobo
Nvidia geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256mb
Soundblaster 24-bit audigy 2

I ditched my SB live 5.1 for an Audigy 2 ZS. I kept going between the onboard soundstorm and the live because I needed a Joystick port for my flight stick (Which the motherboard doesn't have.

The 'no recent drivers' thing with the Live was a pain and I kept getting crackly and intermittent sound from it.

The Audigy ZS was well worth the £50 I paid. I wasn't intending to spend that much but reviews said not to bother with the Audigy value and pay the extra for the ZS. The difference in quality was much better than I had expected.

AMD Athlon XP2200+
Aero7 lite
1GB Crucial pc2700
Abit NF7-s V2.0
80GB Seagate SATA
120GB Seagate SATA
Geforce4 Ti4200 128mb
Benq FP767-12 17" 12ms
SB Audigy 2 ZS

The only Creative SB I've ever had was the ISA SoundBlaster16, (good times, good times :-)lol. So I can't say much for those other soundcards, however, my nForce2 has EAX 2.0 and Xear3d. My point is that you may not have to get another sound card just to get EAX...but yours may be different, I dunno.

Oh, bitboy, do you have an nForce2? Just wondering because you say you need an add-in card to get eax (on your PC anyways)... And marky81, does Nv2 mean the nForce2? I'm guessing it does.

Chaintech 7NJL3 mobo
nForce2 +MCP 400 chipset
GeForce FX 5700 LE 256MB
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With every gunshot, a new crack was revealed in Noir York

The reason I said driver updates are more questionable with Nvidia is because Nvidia seems to have abandoned Soundstorm production after the Nforce2 chipset, and why I have no idea because it was an incredibly good onboard soundcard, better than most add on sound cards that were released at that time as a matter of fact. So who knows how much longer they'll continue to provide drivers.

Creative, while they don't update their drivers nearly as frequently as they should, does do an excellent job continuing driver development for long periods of time, as even AWE32's and 64's are still supported on Windows XP, and those are ANCIENT!

EAX2.0 isn't that big of deal now for support, as many cards to that. EAX-HD is where you're gonna Soundstorm and the Live drop the ball.

Also, the Audigies have dramatically better sound quality over the Live's in signal-to-noise ratio, etc. Not sure how much better it is in that aspect compared to the Soundstorm, but I do know it's still better.

"It's like Gomer Pyle in Bangkok!"

My soundstorm SHOULD support EAX 2.0 anyway..at least thats what I've read online.

I would opt for an audigy, but while I'm not spending any money I think the soundstorm will do fine:

Just installed it when I got home last night and is running fine, in fact I whacked all the settings in DAWN OF WAR to high on the sound and it didn't even flinch.

AMD Athlon XP 1.8GHz
512MB RAM
120GB HDD SATA
12GB HDD IDE
GeForce 4 Ti4600 w/ 128MB RAM
Pioneer DVD/RW
SB Live! 5.1
ABIT NF-7S Motherboard