Sound card upgrade. Need a little guidance.

[sciroccosven]

I am looking to overhaul my sound and video. I have my video card picked out and I am going to do sound as well. I currently have onboard sound.

My system is an Acer setup.
Athlon 64 3800 X2 Proc.
1 gig ram
250 gig hd
Video card I am going to buy will be an XFX Geforce 7900 GS
17 Inch LCD Monitor ACER
I will either pick up a set of z-2300 2.1 or more likely the z5300e 5.1 setup.

I am looking to get the basement of the sound blaster x-fi card. The Extreme gamer. It does not have any x-ram and I was wonder if that really makes a huge difference and where the difference shows itself. This card is primarily for gaming at a high level but not the max. With 1 gig of ram I dont think I will be able to run stuff at rediculously high qualities.

My question is would it be a mistake to not go with the fatality card that has 64 mb of x-ram. The cost will tack on $20.00 to $30 but everything I want to do is going to keep adding up. My upgrades are basically my decision to NOT buy a ps3 until a couple years from now so I dont want to screw up or have regrets and so far I am happy with the parts I have lined up on the video side.

I dont know if this makes a difference but I am not looking to play games online. (OK I will still play team fortress classic, I wont stop playing that till they run out of servers) Just run 1st person shooters at a high quality level.

In closing they both seem like good cards however the extreme gamer had higher ratings and seemed to have less problems than the more powerful fatality. The extreme gamer however doesnt have any memory. Do I really need the ram? If I dont get it will I regret it?

Thanks in advance for help and guidance.

Dave

 

[Willz]

The X-Ram currently does nothing and is really not worth the extra cost, I am hoping one day it might be took full advantage of if possible but I think this would mean that Games would have to have special Coding to allow them to take advantage of the X-Ram.

 

[sciroccosven]

Well that saved me $20.00. Why do they bother even putting it in there if there arent any applications that make use of it?

 

[RavynX]

I've also been reading reviews about how the Fatal1ty cards don't hold up to their hype.

Are these X-Fi cards a big upgrade from say an Audigy 2 ?

 

[Willz]

Yea the only difference between the Fatal1ty X-Fi and the Platinum is the 64mb X-Ram on the card :p, I got a X-Fi Fatal1ty, I hope the X-Ram will actualy be took advantage of one day.

I dont know If it will be a good upgrade as I have never heard sound whilst using that card, It proberbly might be, it should last longer and be better for gaming for sure.