£40 - sound card or headphones? Advice please :)

jmp_78 · 5 Mar 2010 at 21:02

Hi all, please bear with me on this one!

I have built-in Realtek audio from my motherboard, and a pair of 3 year old (£15) Sony headphones.

For the purposes of gaming, which would give me the most noticeable improvement in sound quality for £40?

Option 1 - Asus Xonar DS sound card (with current headphones)
Option 2 - Creative Fatal1ty HS-800 headphones (with built-in audio)

Cheers

alex24 · 5 Mar 2010 at 21:04

Spend £50 and get the goldring NS1000 phones. They punch well above their weight at that price.

Pick up a second hand m-audio sound card or creative x-fi/audigy after a little bit of saving.

jmp_78 · 5 Mar 2010 at 22:08

alexhull24 said:
Spend £50 and get the goldring NS1000 phones. They punch well above their weight at that price.

£80 is about the cheapest I can see them online..?

Marsman · 5 Mar 2010 at 22:53

Play sells them for £50.

DTWD · 6 Mar 2010 at 07:19

It is one of those difficult questions, it depends on the quality of the headphones as to how good they could sound, never mind what they sound like now.

I would start with a better sound card, then you know your getting the best out of your current headphones. If it still doesn't sound good enough a set of headphones isn't a great deal more. You can spend a lot on headphones (a huge amount), but you can start to get good headphones, that most people would be happy with, at around the £25 mark.

chrispystix · 6 Mar 2010 at 07:42

alexhull24 said:
Spend £50 and get the goldring NS1000 phones. They punch well above their weight at that price.

Pick up a second hand m-audio sound card or creative x-fi/audigy after a little bit of saving.

I has the same question. Bought both for about £90 including the Goldring. Noise Reduction is fab. My movie experience is now much better. Look for a sound card with Dolby Headphone.

jmp_78 · 6 Mar 2010 at 08:55

My other thought was the Creative HS-1000 Fatal1ty headset. It's sbout £50, but uses a USB connection rather than 3.5mm jack, and incorporates it's own sound processing. It doesn't seem to get mega reviews because it bypasses your existing sound card, but for me this shouldn't be a problem.

Only concern was if it would work with Win7 64-bit, and the fact that I'd never be able to use it with anything else!

Kills 2 birds with 1 stone mind...

alex24 · 6 Mar 2010 at 13:23

Don't bother. If you're going to do something, do it properly. Getting a discrete soundcard and decent heaphones is definitely the way forward. The sound quality will be much better overall.