Creative notes that “audio remains one of the most overlooked upgrades,” and I’d say that’s true, going by my previous experiences of replacing motherboard audio solutions with affordable PCIe sound cards. Thus, it is going to be interesting to see (hear?) if this is still the case in 2026, when our review goes live. Stay tuned…
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-18/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
cyrusfox This is great, might need to pick this up. I have a quad setup and a lot of mobo's don't properly handle the 4.0 setup. I have a usb dongle and it is serviceable, This would be the ideal solution. Reply
chaz_music I am very much interested in reading about this when you publish your review. The 120dB SNR is 'suspicious' but I am hopeful. If they found a way to isolate the line level out jacks, that would help. It is extremely difficult to place a high resolution analog system sitting on top of a noisy PCIe bus as well as being powered by an ATX SMPS system with noise spikes that can reach 10-50mV. And if that card is populated in a system with a high powered GPU using one of the high current paralleled 12V connectors, the noise added by the PCIe ground loops through the motherboard will kill the Creative 120dB SNR. Those ground loops are rough on the motherboard and PCIe area, but they help one thing: with the connector issues, you tend to only see the 12V pins burned – not the return pins. The return current can also flow through the ATX power connector back to the PSU. I suspect that the additional ground noise will create more common mode noise. Reply
bit_user Notton said: Yeah, it's so overlooked even Creative Labs themselves don't sell a 5.1, let alone a 7.1 speaker set to go with their sound card. They used to. They bought Cambridge SoundWorks and had a relatively decent little multi-speaker package, for a while. Not sure what happened to that, but I suppose it just got squeezed out of the market. Reply
bit_user SomeoneElse23 said: I was thinking along the same line: I was looking for an optical jack. There is a way to combine optical and S/P-Dif using a 1/8th inch connector. The first time I saw this was in a Sony Discman I owned, for which you could get a special cable that drew optical out of one of the 1/8" ports (I think maybe it re-tasked the line out port?). You could clearly see the cable was end-to-end optical, with a normal toslink connector at the other end. Reply
usertests May be in the market for a sound card to upgrade an old desktop I picked up with a weird audio problem. But it may be a software fix. Is there anything worthwhile below the $80 price point? Reply
WINTERLORD Hurry up and get one before the sound chips disappear to lol And actualy I believe creative had another fairly new one its atleast 5yrs tho but the audigy fx v2 wich i happily own although i dont notice much a difference with a polk audio setup Reply
phxrider But does it support DTS Connect lke the SB Live models do? EDIT: Actually, just realized the stupidity of this question, it doesn't appear to have digital outs on it. Reply
ravewulf Motherboard audio is usually good enough for me in terms of quality, but I'm definitely feeling the lack of audio jacks on modern motherboards. How is it acceptable for $200+ motherboards to only have 2 or 3 audio jacks on the back? It should be 5 or 6! Reply
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/sound-cards/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/sound-cards/creative-updates-its-sound-blaster-pcie-line-after-5-years-new-usd79-99-audigy-fx-pro-7-1-pitched-as-clear-upgrade-over-standard-onboard-audio#main
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