When it comes to building a gaming PC, I find the most overlooked feature is the Sound Card. On-board sound cards that come with higher end gaming capable motherboards are often more than good enough to feed a nice signal to your speakers.
But leave it to the people at Creative Labs to once again introduce a PCI-E audio board and new quad core processor technology called Recon3D in three different flavors:
For gamers on a budget you can go with the standard Recon3D card for $99.99, with THX TruStudio Pro support and Crystal Voice audio technologies powering the card, along with the proprietary quad-core Core3D processor at its heart.
The next step up is the Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional edition, which features everything the standard edition has but with added I/O support, beam-forming microphone, and CrystalVoice Echo Cancellation, CrystalVoice Focus and CrystalVoice Active Noise Reduction, all for $149.99.
If you have the cash to spare and the ears to withstand the awesomeness of the pure and unadulterated rush of THX TruStudio Pro audio technologies then you’ll want the Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Champion Edition. This bad-mofo comes custom I/O mini-jacks, CrystalVoice Echo Cancellation, CrystalVoice Focus and CrystalVoice Active Noise Reduction, as well as custom software to easily and efficiently switch between multi-speaker setups
I have been coasting with a really decent set of speakers and my on-board card for a while now, but this just has me eager to earn back my game geek street cred.
And by “street” I mean the information superhighway. Ok… that last statement might have cost me more points than it earned.