Best pci sound blas

I have a emachine t3958. It is a celeron d. I only have pci bus and would like to upgrade my sound for music enjoyment and manipulation and games. I would like to take advantage of my home speaker system. My question is what is the best card given my bus limitations. Which would be the two best cards.

You're welcome. I still use my Audigy , and was always very impressed by the sound quality. I recently bought an Audigy 4, mainly for the newer soundfont/ASIO software, and I think the clarity of the sound is even better.
It's a very versatile card, for sure. I use the built-in synth with Finale software when composing music, and can play other parts with Reason using the Asio drivers (much improved in the Audigy 4). The CMSS2 mode is a good fake surround for stereo-only movies, and the card can decode pretty much all kinds of surround-sound recordings.
Most importantly, the drivers are stable. The Audigy ,2, and 4 all use the same drivers, which I've used with XP, XP x64, and even the Beta of Microsoft Vista.
Even chipsets that have trouble with pro PCI audio cards (or the X-fi) like the Nforce4 usually work fine with the Audigy.
Based on what I've heard, the X-fi is just too much of a risk. It seems not to work with a lot of hardware.

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    Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP. Clicking the "Kudos star" to the left is a great way to say thanks!
    When your problem has been solved, accept the solution by clicking the "Accept as Solution" button to help other members in the future!

  • Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value 7.1 PCI Sound Card

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    It really depends on what you're doing and your speaker configuration.
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  • Pci sound card and beats together?

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    This question was solved.
    View Solution.

    I doubt if that can be done. Cause once you install a pci sound card, the integrated sound gets disabled.
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    I am an HP employee.
    Make it easier for other people to find solutions, by marking my answer “Accept as Solution” if it solves your problem.
    ***Click on “Kudos” STAR to say thanks!***

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    Hmm what other options is there for the bios on PCI slots?Also anything you connect to the motherboard can have oxidization (I think its that) build up on the connection. Check the connector on the card and get a eraser (Pen eraser is better) and give it a good cleaning. The connector might have alot of build-up on it and you can see it by a dark yellowy colour. I cleaned my graphics card and ram connectors after they got alot of the build-up on them. On a older computer my graphics stopped working and this fixed it. Also I went away for a while (like a month) and came back to see that my puter didn't display anything. Opened it up and saw that the graphic card had alot of corrosion? on the card connector and in the slot. Does that if you computer is turned of for a long time. Had a heck of time trying to clean the slot out. One other thing that it could be is the sound card is faulty. I had an audigy 2 and it died a while back . It picks it up and then try and use it computer freezes and the after restart it's not there anymore. Hope it's not that problem. Hope this gives you something to go by.

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    Message Edited by danielarbib on 03-03-200705:26 PM

    What do you mean by 64-bit's
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    Edited by: SlowToady on Nov 18, 2008 6:44 PM

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