Bluegears b-Enspirer (CMI8788) sound card review!!!

i have no problems what so ever, i haven't noticed much fps drop either!

don't know what settings you are using in those games either, maybe your system can't handle it! when i played doom 3 and 2004 with 512 of ram i got pauses and occasional stuttering, had 333 also then, but by lowering detail levels it went away

 

Do you have the OpenAL package in your system? -call it a hunch...

 

"i have no problems what so ever, i haven't noticed much fps drop either!"

Lol well even if the performance reduction was normal you wouldn't notice a difference on your system

"don't know what settings you are using in those games either, maybe your system can't handle it! when i played doom 3 and 2004 with 512 of ram i got pauses and occasional stuttering, had 333 also then, but by lowering detail levels it went away"

I don't think that is it. Putting in a different soundcard shouldn't reduce the average frame rate from somewhere above 50 down to about 40 in UT2004.

 

Heh, no afraid not

See what you make of this. I was experimenting with UT2004 and I reduced the number of sound channels it uses from 32 down to 16 and the buzzing noise went away and for the most part the performance is more like it should be.

Unfortunately with the BF games and GW there is no way to change this so I don't know if it was a fluke or not and so far these are the only games I have the problem with.

Also I downloaded Rightmark 3D Sound and the positioning test works in all 3 modes (DS3D software, hardware, and EAX), but when running the CPU utilization test Rightmark crashes when using 32 sound buffers. I plan on doing some more testing with that now.

 

Which sound card did you use before?

 

SB Live DE 5.1

 

I don't think that the card support any hardware acceleration. Oxygen HD chip support 128 voices, I think that your SB Live only support 32 voices or maybe less(I'm not sure). If you look at this, even X-Fi is also slower in 128 voices mode than in 32 voices mode.

 

I'm not sure how many hardware channels the SB Live has either and I take your point that the more you use the more processing power that requires, but it doesn't account for the buzzing and popping noises I get.

I thought the CMI8788 did the mixing in hardware, just not EAX.

 

Look at the link I gave you, X-Fi is an all "hardware" based card but why is it slower in 128voices than in 32voices? The buzzing and popping might indicate a faulty card. Btw you can also try the driver from X-Meridian and other Oxygen HD based card.

 

Which pci slot are you now using? Try to move the soundcard to other pci slots and see if it helps. Also disable the onboard realtek alc-650 via the bios.


Good luck!

 

Onboard sound is disabled. In fact I don't think I've ever used it.

It's currently in the 3rd slot down from the top and according to msinfo32 its not sharing an IRQ but it would be worth trying it in a different slot.

I've played around with Rightmark 3D Sound and it seems it will crash on any setting if you run the test once with one setting and then change the number of channels and then try and run it again. So I don't know if thats the program's fault or the drivers of the card.

 

I was just responding to your statement that you didn't think that the card supported any hardware acceleration.

I tried the Auzentech drivers the other day and they wont install because its looking for an Auzentech card. Is there a way to mod the driver install to make it install on any 8788 based card? I looked for drivers for the Sondigo Inferno but couldn't find them on the Sondigo site. So far I've tried two versions off the Bluegears site and the latest from C-Media. I highly doubt the manufacturers modify the reference drivers in any significant way. From what I have read the only card that differs from the reference board design is the Meridian.

 

I meant your SB Live, not the b-Enspirer.

 

Latest driver for b-Enspirer dated 4 Jan 2007:
http://www.bluegears.com/download_b-Enspirer.html
Can someone tell me what is the difference?

 

this sound card is only for movies and music nothing more. but for games, u need EAX.

 

I don't need it, maybe you need it but not me. I'm playing GTR2, Carbon, Oblivion, and Rise of Legend now, none of these games support it. Btw I found out that the driver above has passed the WinXP WHQL. The driver works with my X-Meridian in Vista X64(RC2) but only stereo.

 

You dont need Eax you can play games just as good without EAX, I should know. I been playing my games great with out using Eax. I so have it up to eax2. but I dont be using it.

People need to realize you dont need to have eax for gaming, theres people that game and dont use Eax at all. like people who dont like the way eax sounds.

Yea there are games that dont support it at all. Half life 2 and source games dont support it. Remember EAX isnt a need its a want. you can do without it.

 

no you don't need EAX to game...personally I like my sound as true as possible and I usually go w/o all the "sound effects" and enhancements. With that said I use the X-Meridian in gaming w/o an issue...the only effect I'll use is Dolby Headphone perhaps. This thing blows my old Creative POS out of the water. ...as will any 8788 based card.

 

I game with my XM7.1 all the time. Sound great. Kills my Audigy 2 with EAX or without. I have my Audigy 2 installed for a project but other then that I don't really car about EAX. I sure wouldn't sacrifice sound quality for EAX.

 

Hey guys, here is an update with my latest fiddling.

For some reason the audio glitches have completely disappeared in UT2004 although performance is still noticeably worse.

I tried it in my friends machine which is an Athlon X2 4600+, 1.5GB RAM and Radeon X1600 XT and there was no sign of the audio glitching but we weren't able to try BF1942 or GW as he doesn't have them, and they are the main games I'm having probs with.
(BTW he was quite blown away by the features and sound quality, he though his onboard sound was awesome, so there may be another 8788 convert )

I connected my HT system up to my PC and tried playing Doom3 with surround sound enabled and found that when a sound source was directly behind me I could hear no sound at all coming from that source. I installed OpenAL and set Doom3 to use it and surround sound works as it should.

Despite the wonderful features and amazing sound quality, I am seriously considering putting my SB Live back in my machine as I just can't live with the enormous drop in performance in games, that used to run very smoothly, when using the card.

I will be doing a reformat and reinstallation of Windows XP in the next day or so, so I'll see if that helps at all. I'll also try new drivers when they come out but if nothing helps I don't know how much longer I will be using this card.