Replacing P4B onboard sound to improve gaming

Hi,

P4B MB with a 1.5GHz P4 CPU.

I am experiencing dropouts in sound with some games (it's particularly
problematical with Need for Speed Hot Pursuit II).

I've read that the onboard sound on these boards is rather minimal, so I'm
willing to drop in a sound card.

How do I know what constitutes an adequate sound card? I'm not looking for
high quality 5.1 sound, I just want to hear everything.

Would a PCI Soundblaster 16 (which is pretty cheap) do the job? What sort of
features am I looking for in a sound card to improve gaming?

TIA - icebiker

In article , "Icebiker"
wrote:

Hi,

P4B MB with a 1.5GHz P4 CPU.

I am experiencing dropouts in sound with some games (it's particularly
problematical with Need for Speed Hot Pursuit II).

I've read that the onboard sound on these boards is rather minimal, so I'm
willing to drop in a sound card.

How do I know what constitutes an adequate sound card? I'm not looking for
high quality 5.1 sound, I just want to hear everything.

Would a PCI Soundblaster 16 (which is pretty cheap) do the job? What sort of
features am I looking for in a sound card to improve gaming?

TIA - icebiker

For info, you could look he

http://us.creative.com/products/welcome.asp?category=1

but one post in Google mentions that some of the Soundblaster
model names, have multiple hardware implementations.

In any case, start with the game options menu, and see
what audio standards the game uses. Match that to the
audio standards the various models of sound cards support.

There is probably plenty of info in Google, on things that
work or don't work:

http://groups.google.com/groups?thre...concentric.net

There is also a "alt.games.need-for-speed" newsgroup.

HTH,
Paul