Right now i have a Realtek ac97, and although it seems ok for when i'm playing music or recording tracks, when i'm playing ah2 i notice that certain explosion sounds, sound terrible, taking away from the experience.
Now i understand that this card is an onboard card, and that they tend to take away cycles from the cpu, which is probably why the explosions sound so bad.
I have 5 pci slots on the mobo, and see that there is a card plugged into the 2nd from the bottom, which is where the mic, headphone, line in jacks are. So i'm guessing this is somehow tied in to the ac97, being that it needs a way to get signals.
So if i was to upgrade the card, is it as simple as figuring out how to disable the ac97, rebooting, shutting down, unplugging the power, removing the card thats in there now, putting in the new audio card into the same slot, rebooting, and installing the drivers that come with the disk?
Also what's a good sound card to replace it with? When i play and record music or play ah, 95% of the time i just use good quality stereo headphones, and the other 5% for playback i use altec lansing desktop speakers with a woofer. For movies and stuff i use a real surround sound system. I'm looking in the $50 and under price range if that's possible.
Thanks
