Best Gaming Chair Computers have a lot of components that can be upgraded, modified, or changed to improve overall performance. When you get serious about gaming, you’re likely to start by upgrading more common areas like memory and storage.
One essential thing that can really revolutionize your gaming experience when upgraded is the sound card. Having the best sound card for gaming on your device will give you better sound quality and response, which, in turn, results in better immersion to the world that you are playing.
Comparison Chart
Best Sound Card for Gaming
How can you decide which gaming sound card is the best? We’ve got your back. These top three options should make your search a little bit easier than before.
1. Creative Sound Blaster Z PCIe Gaming Sound Card
The Creative Sound Blaster Z PCIe Gaming Sound Card is a 5.1 surround sound card that can support your entire gaming system without any trouble.
Review:
The Creative Sound Blaster Z PCIe is known as one of the best sound cards for gaming on today’s market. Because the sound card can support 5.1 surround sound, you are able to install this card into nearly any setup and have a quality, successful sound experience.
In addition to being a 5.1 card, this unit also has a number of accelerated features that help make audio sound more dynamic and alive. These effects, known as EAX, are accelerated by the hardware itself.
This sound card offers dual stereo microphone inputs as well as an SNR of around 116dB. While this isn’t the best SNR that you can find, it is one of the best values at this price point and is likely to be just the right ratio for most home gamers’ equipment.
Finally, let’s mention one of the favorite features of this card. The Z PCIe is a fully customizable card. This means that you can easily make adjustments to nearly any input or output aspect of the sound card control, thanks to an easy-to-use dashboard. This type of customization is a huge improvement over stock sound cards, and you’ll immediately notice the difference.
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2. Creative Sound Blaster Audigy PCIe Sound Card
Next up, we have another excellent sound card from the Creative Sound Blaster line. The Creative Sound Blaster Audigy PCIe Sound Card is a slightly more budget-friendly version of the Sound Blaster Z PCIe. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that this card doesn’t have some very worthwhile features to look at.
Review:
In terms of SNR, this sound card comes in a bit lower than the Z PCIe with its SNR of 106dB. While this may be lower, it is still significantly higher and more versatile than the rating on most stock sound cards, so you’ll still be getting a significant improvement.
This card also has a sound dashboard and EAX enhanced features like the Z. These features ensure that you can customize the performance of the card and see great results on both output and input.
While this card officially works on anything past Windows 7 in the Windows family, many people saw some driver issues while setting up this card. You may need to do some tweaking and troubleshooting to make sure that this card is running to its full capabilities.
Finally, this card has 7.1 surround-sound capabilities while its counterpart only has 5.1 This allows you to do more with your card if you have a full setup that requires more output ratios without sacrificing quality.
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3. ASUS Xonar DGX PCI-E Sound Card
The final sound card we are reviewing today is by ASUS. Their Xonar DGX PCI-E Sound Card is one of ASUS’s most popular budget sound cards.
Review:
The Xonar DGX is from the budget line of ASUS Xonar cards. The DGX models are made with headphone users in mind while the DSX cards are ideal for those who have a home theater-style setup at work.
As most gamers are more likely to be on the DGX side of things, we are focusing on that sound card today.
As such, the DGX only supports up to 5.1 surround sound. This number of both input and output audio options is more than enough for most headphone users, so this shouldn’t be an issue unless you have an expansive at-home audio setup.
This DGX soundcard has a very balanced SNR rating that is well above the stock cards that you are probably using right now. This means that you will have more crisp audio without as much noise when using this Xonar sound card.
Finally, this sound card is an affordable option with useful presets. The three preset modes available are preset in voice, pro-gaming, and exciter modes, but you can also use the ASUS sound card dashboard to customize your experience as needed.
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Conclusion
As you have learned today, there are a lot of options when it comes to selecting the best sound card for gaming. Thankfully, sound cards do not need to be upgraded as frequently as other computer equipment because their development happens more slowly. As such, you can stick with your choice for a long time!
We have found that the Sound Blaster Z PCIe Gaming Sound Card is the best choice right now. This internal sound card has excellent features as well as fantastic sound quality that you may not be able to find in other options.
If you are planning to use your sound card to power a home theater audio setup, however, we would suggest the Sound Blaster Audigy instead. This one boasts a 7.1 surround sound setup that will be more beneficial for your needs at this time.
