Sounds cards! With Windows 7 becoming the norm finding a decent sound card has become incredibly difficult. On one hand you’ve got Creative which used to the only choice, but after driver issues and other problems there’s no be all and end all anymore.

This is an overview of my experience which will hopefully help someone because finding the right sound card is no easy task.

I started by trawling Google with search terms like “The best gaming sound card for Windows 7″, “Best high end card for gaming” etc. I eventually narrowed it down to a few choices;

• Creative X-Fi Titanium
• Auzentech X-Fi Prelude
• Xonar D2 / D2X

So next I looked at EAX, how important is it? I found that since Vista EAX is a bit of a hash due to Microsoft dropping Direct Sound 3D since DirectX 10. Creatives and in turn Auzentechs solution is to use Alchemy which basically passes DS3d through OpenAL to the Hardware which can only be described as emulation. Now ASUS can’t actually do EAX through the Hardware due to no X-Fi chip, they emulate the effects through their software.

So to summarise both methods involve some form of emulation, one less intensive than the other.

Lets put EAX aside for a minute and look at sound quality. I’ll start by pointing out I haven’t actually had first hand experience with the X-Fi but I’ve read plenty of stuff from people that have saying that the Xonar has a much more high end sound, we’re talking £300 AMP quality here. The components on the Xonar are top notch and this is where Xonar get the edge. Straight up sound is much better and EAX is supported, so to me this seemed the direction to go.

I initially decided on the D2X which is PCI-Express, thing is it actually has a bridge chip on the card. It’s not native  PCI-E and I noticed boot up time was slower due to this bridge needing to kick in for Windows. My PCI-E slots were in stupid places anyway, the card was way too long and my memory slots blocked all but one slot. So I got to test it but promptly arranged to return the card.

Instead I ordered the D2 which is PCI but other than that is exactly the same card. There is some conflicting information out there saying the D2X is better because it has GX2.0 (the EAX emulation) and overall sounds cleaner. This is untrue, they didn’t retest the D2 with the new drivers. Each card is EXACTLY the same minus the interface.

I’ve spent a good month researching this and I can save you wasting the same amount of time. At the time of writing the Xonar D2/D2X is the better card overall.

Oh and the reason I never got anywhere with the Prelude? Yeah they don’t manufacture them anymore and support for the card isn’t particularly good looking at the forums. If you can get one though, it’s certainly a contender but a more expensive one.

I’ll probably update when I’ve lived with the card a bit longer but so far I’m very happy. Listening to music and playing games is so much more immersive

Blade&Soul is an MMO currently being developed at NCSoft. It has a strong focus on martial arts with fluid reactive gameplay. The combat system appears to be in the same vein as a beat em up and looks incredibly fun

A new year and a new game on my radar. I’m not even sure how I came across this one all I know is I want to play this game asap.

You have to watch this video in HD, click here now!

Well just when you thought Valve couldn’t get any better at bringing amazing multiplayer experiences to PC gamers they went and released Left 4 Dead 2. Around a year of development time it created quite a storm around online communities for abandoning the original Left 4 Dead and for not having enough of a graphical update. How wrong were they

Graphics look more polished, blood and gore is more plentiful and the whole gameplay just feels more exciting from the get go. There is plenty of extra content here to justify it as a sequel a favourite of mine being the Realism mode which as the name suggests makes it feel more realistic with less ammo and better accuracy required to survive.

Oh and who could forget the brilliant inclusion of melee weapons, there’s nothing quite like beheading a zombie with an axe or bashing a clown zombie in the face with a frying pan

It’s now a regular game in my playing list pushing Left 4 Dead into a dark corner. As sad as that is I don’t feel cheated, this game is a great improvement and I’m sure we’ll see Zoey and gang again soon in the next free campaign Valve are already working on.

Long live Valve

Well that’s just not on now is it?!

I’ll cook something up soon.

My friend Sam convinced me to purchase Red Alert 3, going on about how fun it was. Having read reviews that weren’t that favourable I had my doubts. Anyway in a fit of boredom I decided to purchase it from GAME at the reasonable price of £19.99 for the deluxe version, hardly as exciting as my friend Alex’s quest to get the game.

I’ve played quite a few games online with my friends now and have to say Sam was right, it is fun. It’s far from perfect, but it seems far more focused on not taking itself to seriously and I like that. An all round excellent game.

Now if only the sods will buy Team Fortress 2 on my recommendation, the world would be a better place

This is an e-shot I did at work, had a nice theme to work from so had a good go at this one. I’m pleased with how it turned out. Click image below to view.

Well I finally finished decorating my play room about a week or two ago, but I’ve been a bit lazy getting around to taking some photos. I’m calling it a play room, pc room, media room anything but office. Office just reminds me too much of work… but I often find myself slipping up and calling it an office anyway.

Mental ramblings aside I’ve got some photos now and you can view them below, WAHEY!

Nice weather for the next couple of days according to google, awesome

I’ve been playing Rainbow Six Vegas 2 loads recently. It’s a brilliant game to play with mates over Xbox Live and really encourages team tactics by giving everyone the XP earned in game.

I played the first one quite a lot online and really enjoyed it and this one is no different. Playing Terrorist Hunt with friends mostly but dabble in multiplayer matches every now and again.

So yeah if you have a 360 and haven’t got it yet, I recommend it. It’s only £9.99 over at play.com.

Well my good old 7800GTX has lasted me a good couple of years but now with ATI offering a cheap but solid gaming solution with the HD4770 I forked out a measley £90  to get a massive performance boost in my aging PC.

Currently running it on an AMD Athlon 4000+ with 2GB of DDR2 memory, which is a bit of a bottleneck but what matters is the games and they are performing great. Certainly beats the full £500 upgrade I was looking at which I can’t really afford right now.

Oh and Ruby certainly beats the stupid fairy woman Nvidia have as their mascot.