Profile of The Shape

Another game with FHQ that turned out to be a close one

GG indeed...very close. Looked grim for awhile there.

That was crazy... I'm sure the germ player was thinking omfg how did I blow that.

The 670 kills in FPS games. But I get far more frames than you with my 7850 in COH2 simply because it's ATI and not Nvidia. It's crazy.... The 670 cost, like $349 didn't it? Mine was $179 and I got 2 free games which I sold for around $60 making the card just about $110... For that price I couldn't pass it up. Plus... I sold my 6870 and another 6870, so essentially my upgrade was free and then some. Look into a 7950 maybe. If you must stick with Nvidia though, just wait for next gen cards so you get way more performance than a measly 10-20%. The only way to really boost your games would be with the 780 ti and it's uber $$$.

Heck...when COH2 came out, people with Titans were complaining.

No fair.... When the Germs I played on this map knew I was Partisans, they simply burned every single building with 1 pio flamer.

Onboard sound is terrible. I've had the SoundBlaster X-fi and I have a Toneport UX2 for audio applications and simple mixing. They aren't even close to being the same.

First off... the major difference in 5.1 audio using something like ADA995 speakers which were like $400 new. Very solid speakers for gaming and audio. I also have some DT770 headphones.

The main difference is that using Creative X-fi you get true 5.1 surround which the Toneport won't do ... even try to. Even onboard audio doesn't make stereo sources into Dolby Pro-logic like the X-fi or similar cards. I don't know about the Z cards.... but apparently they don't have an audio "mode" anymore...they do it automatically. I think that's actually a backstep though. I want to select either Audio mode or gaming mode or Theater Mode if I want. I thought that my X-fi crapped out on me...it's been a long time since I've owned it and it was just Win7 being lame....but I took out the card and used the onboard and I just felt lost. I had 5.1 speakers and everything was hooked up, but I felt so lost without the abilities of the card itself combined with the audio console. Realtek's software just felt so basic and stripped down. Another thing is, I've never had serious issues with Creative's drivers. Toneports ASIO drivers are better though. The latency is much lower now.

Now I know this soundcard by heart and I know how it sounds. Onboard doesn't come close AND it picks up external noises unlike both the Toneport or X-fi, which are both dead silent.

I can't say that ALL onboard is crap...I also think there will always be the exception but not in my case and not in my PC with 2 different motherboards and not in my GF's computer either. My Audigy 2 crapped out 1 day...just stopped working and I had to use her onboard and it was just awful.

Now back to the original main difference for me between the Toneport...the music/audio device and my X-fi. If the source material if 5.1 audio, the Toneport doesn't sound proper. Hard to explain, but it sounds exactly how you would think 6 sounds trying to merge into 2 speakers would sound without proper decoding. So although strictly stereo mode might sound better though the headphones...I'm not going to switch back and forth since a lot of things I watch use 5.1 audio. This isn't even an opinion...these are plain as day facts. Now listening to the 5.1 using the X-fi into headphones...guess what... Still good. It does something in the software that enables the proper channels to separate, probably because it comes with a DTS and Dolby decoder.

So I can't say other DAC's don't have that... but I'm only going by the onboards I've personally dealt with.

Plus... with the Toneport you can't really color the audio with a built in EQ nor would you want too but you can alter the sound with Creative's software for nighttime listening..basically a compressor. It does in fact have built in effects, like reverb, delay, and compression on each 5.1 channels in audio mode. If you only want the center (Voice) channel louder, you can do so.

Just some thoughts.