The original Audigy brought ASIO drivers, SB1394 (IEEE 1394) and EAX Advanced HD to the masses, but it was criticised because some people felt betrayed by the 24-bit 96kHz specification, which referred to the DACs rather than the sampling rate.

Think of sound cards and chances are you're probably thinking of Creative. Thanks to its phenomenally successful Sound Blaster line of cards, Creative is easily the leader of consumer PC audio. The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Platinum Ex is the latest in this range, and is by far the most feature rich. The question is do you need most of these features?

Creative has raised the stakes again with the Audigy, this time from 16- to 24-bit sampling.

Creative has enjoyed a long reign as the driving force in consumer-grade PC audio for the better part of a decade.

When we last looked at the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 (the Platinum Ex, June 2003) we were highly impressed by the soundcard and its many functions, but felt that there was perhaps too much on offer, leaving you with many unwanted, unused and unwarranted inclusions.

Better sound for your laptop from Creative, plus the little white lies about its heritage exposed.

A welcome update to the Sound Blaster that can deliver perceptibly better audio than onboard chips, but it goes beyond most people’s needs for PC audio.

Sound Card

sound card

After January's shenanigans with this system, it's nice to have it back in the testing Labs. My initial impressions haven't changed: this is one mean system that will handle anything you throw at it, and the benchmarks back that claim.

The Athlon64 has only been out a short while, and although it's an excellent processor, from all accounts it's not selling as well as it should be.

If you're looking for a computer geared for gaming, the Vitesse is it. If you think that a Pentium 4C rumbling at 3GHz with a massive 1GB of DDR400 RAM has a nice ring to it, its gamers'-poetry when you add in a RADEON 9800 PRO.

It's inside that you find a HyperThreaded Pentium 4 3GHz processor with an 800MHz FSB, plus a gig of DDR400 RAM in dual-channel configuration.

Every once in a while, we receive a PC for review thats an absolute pleasure to use, offering stunning quality and bucketloads of performance. XENONs Atomic 625 is all this and more.

The SB Live! is one of the most commonly used cards, and as such, is a good yardstick for the performance of the new generation of sound cards.

Should DIY "fixes" for Vista product drivers be encouraged? One good Samaritan has been slapped down by Creative for rolling his own Vista drivers, and users are taking up the fight.

Last year the Pentium 4 was beginning to show its true colours as a top performance desktop CPU, but it was still squarely outmatched in the value stakes by the new Athlon processor. DDR RAM was also becoming the standard, with SDRAM finally going the way of the extinct plankton, graptolites.

One-off patent licence payment helps keep media player firm afloat.

Creative's best efforts in desktop audio slide their way into the side of a laptop.

We put out the call to Australia’s white box PC manufacturers for a good high-end $4000 PC and PC Express was the first to respond.