Is a “Realtek AC97 onboard sound card” the same thing as an “Avance AC97 onboard sound card?” I have the latter, and I have been told that a certain problem I’m having can be solved if I have the former and I update its drivers.
But in any case, I do know my driver for my own onboard soundcard is out of date, so I was going to try to update it in any case. But when I went to avance’s website, it appears they’re out of the electronics business, and they point me to another site (drivershq.com) as a trustworthy source for avance drivers. But at drivershq.com, apparently, they are no longer offering drivers directly. Instead [ripoff]you have to pay $30 to register a copy of their “driver detective” program which tells you which of your drivers are out of date and provides you with copies of up to date drivers.[/ripoff]
Using an unregistered copy of the program, I am able to confirm that my driver for my “Avance AC97 for Via Audio” onboard card is not up to date.
But I am having trouble locating an up-to-date driver. Google searches have led only to ambiguous and confusing results.
Anyone here got the straight dope as to where I can find the driver? Any really good driver database sites out there that don’t charge money?
If it’s onboard, you should really look for drivers on the motherboard website. What brand is it? You should probably update all those drivers, and the BIOS too if you feel comfortable with that. AC97 drivers are generally made for a specific motherboard/chipset combination.
If you have no luck there, driverguide.com is decent, it requires (free) registration last time I checked.
That brings to mind a related question: Could you guys tell me if there’s a really cheap (like $20 or under) sound card that’s still worth getting to replace onboard sound? I am told that a dedicated sound card actually takes a surprisingly sizeable piece of the workload off the CPU for some applications (including some games) so that it could actually be worth it.
I don’t expect a $20 sound card to give me an improvement in sound over my onboard sound, of course, but still, are there recommendations to be had?
Just do what I do whenever I have a question like this…go to Newegg.com, into the sound card section (or the section for whatever else you’re interested), do a price search for anything under $30 or so (or whatever your price range is) and read the customer reviews. Usually they’re pretty spot on.
Seems there’s 9 listed for 10-25 and the turtle beach is on top at the moment. From my personal experience, that’s not a bad way to go. I’ve been pretty happy with most of the turtle beaches I’ve had.
