Retro Rig Sound Options I've been thinking about building a retro PC to play some of my older games on as I am becoming increasingly annoyed over all sorts of little niggles while playing old games on my new PC. -Original StarCarft for example, will not run on my GTX760. -Age of Empires 3 runs ok but the frame rate is strangely low considering how much more powerful my PC is compared to the games recommended specs. (40-80fps) -Trying to get creative EAX to work through alchemy causes tons of audio crackling. -Axis and allies (2004) always crashes after about 10 minuets of play. -And getting games like the original Tomb Raider or GTA 2 to run at all is almost impossible. Anyway. apart from a case and a hard drive I think I have all the parts needed to build a Early to mid 2000s gaming PC: -OS: Windows XP pro. -CPU: I've got a ton of 775 CPUs lying around ranging from a 3.2GHz Prescott P4 to a Core 2 E8500 but I think I favour a Cedar Mill 3.6Ghz P4 the most. -GPU: I've got an nvidia 6200(AGP), 7600GT, 7950GX2, 9600GT or GTS250 to choose from. I think the 7600GT or 7950GX2 would go best with the games I will be playing. -RAM: Not a problem as I have tons of DDR2 sticks. -Motherboard: I'll be using an Asus Maximus 2 formula motherboard. It's a bit too new I think but it's the only spare mobo I have. -PSU: My old Corsair TX750 should be more than adequate. -Monitor: I'll probably be using my old 1280x1024 monitor as that will be the most compatible resolution with these sorts of games. Anyway, I'm a bit hang up over the sound card. EAX is a feature I really liked in older games and getting it to work fully on this rig is one of my priorities. I'm not too bothered about full EAX 5 as I think only about 3 games ever fully supported it but EAX 4 is a must. I have a couple of options already. -The motherboard comes with an asus SupremeFX card which has Creative EAX 4 compatibility. It has no real hardware in it, (in fact it uses a soundmax AD1988B chip I believe) But it does supposedly do EAX 4 in software. -I also have a my old Sound Blaster Live! I salvaged from an old Dell, Model number SB0220. I believe it can only do EAX 2 however. As far as I see it, I have these options. Use the SupremeFX card, buy an old Audigy or X-Fi sound card, or... I have noticed that creative has revived the Audigy line and released the Sound Blaster Audigy Rx which looks like an Audigy 4 with a headphone amp and pci to pci-e bridge. This is very tempting as I do use a pair of 300ohm headphones which may not be driven effectively on an old X-FI or original Audigy sound card. Has anyone tried out this sound card or have any other options they'd like to suggest?
