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I am noticing that EAX doesnt work on any games, so I was thinking of buying an older sound card (from around 2005) to get it working. But it seems with Windows Vista and onwards, the way those cards did EAX doesnt work anymore and you need to use alchemy to fix it, but aparently there can still be problems.

So I found some cheap parts (Core2Duo, 9600 GT, 2GB RAM) and I am thinking if it's easier to just build this PC and put Windows XP on it or if Alchemy is the better option today.
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I've had horrible experiences with Alchemy on several games in the past.
If you're really into the EAX sound effects, a dedicated build is pretty much worth it in my mind!
just use a virtual machine with windows xp, virtual box is free and since games that only work on xp are old they can work on modern computer.
A dedicated build is always better, but usually not worth the hassle and space.
Or just a laptop from that era. Saves from having to find parts and of course space if a VM isn't desired.
If you don't need authentic legacy hardware running, I'd go with VirtualBox first. Takes a bit of harddrive space for the windows install and that's probably it.

If certain games just won't work via emulation of that degree, then consider a refurbished laptop or hardware. Actually my previous rig was from 2005 and is still in good working condition, I'd consider selling it. Although i would probably strip a lot of the upgrades i put in it too...
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rtcvb32: If certain games just won't work via emulation of that degree
virtualization.
emulation is when emulate an other cpu architecture with a software... xp use x86 architecture, you don't need to emulate that, you just need to use the same hardware components on the top of a host OS.
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rtcvb32: If certain games just won't work via emulation of that degree
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LiefLayer: virtualization.
emulation is when emulate an other cpu architecture with a software... xp use x86 architecture, you don't need to emulate that, you just need to use the same hardware components on the top of a host OS.
That assumes you're starting with an x86 system. There's also instructions that exist in some CPU's while later are removed, so there is always going to be some form of emulation. Bochs does full i386 emulation.

Using virtualization is actually fairly recently, when Sun MicroSystems realized they could use the protected mode in a novel way because only half of the modes were actually in use. Before that, it was emulated. And emulation is about... 300x slower. By using a different protection level they could run raw instructions that didn't need protections, and those that did have to request permission which then can be filtered through a safety API and determine what it can/can't do, giving it the sandbox it needs.
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foxworks: Or just a laptop from that era. Saves from having to find parts and of course space if a VM isn't desired.
Since he is specifically talking about EAX... did any laptops really support it anyway? Wasn't EAX mainly in some newer Soundblaster (desktop) soundcards?

Otherwise I partly agree with your suggestion. I have a couple of older laptops running Windows XP and even 98SE that run old Windows games great, and they certainly take less room than my old desktop PC which I keep for the same purpose.
I recently got a Soundblaster X-Fi Titanium to put in my dedicated desktop and so far, any EAX game I threw at it with Alchemy works fine. I only had issues with the original Halo with the sound cutting out randomly but everything else worked fine. So if you want dedicated EAX sound in a modern rig, look into that card since it supports up to EAX 5.0 HD, sounds great, AND works in Windows 10.
Post edited August 28, 2016 by SpooferJahk
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timppu: Since he is specifically talking about EAX... did any laptops really support it anyway? Wasn't EAX mainly in some newer Soundblaster (desktop) soundcards?
EAX was available to third party manufacturers but (if I recall correctly) they were never allowed to support the newest version, always had to be at least one version behind Creative - so I guess that the final version of EAX may only be available on Creative hardware. And to be honest, all my on-board soundcards which supposedly had EAX over the years sucked epically at it. I think ALL games I've tried third party EAX with had serious issues ranging from some really messed up spatial audio to not allowing me to turn on EAX at all. So using ALchemy with an original Soundblaster on Windows Vista or later yielded better results for me than third party support up to Windows XP.

That said: there's a whole bunch of Creative soundcards available for laptops. As a matter of fact I still have a PCIe Soundblaster lying around which always did its job perfectly on my old laptop, USB cards should work just as well. I mostly used it on Vista with ALchemy, the effects were indeed totally messed up in a few games like Hitman 2 but from what I recall they worked perfectly in Blood Money and The Witcher. I can't tell if the errors in some games were caused by ALchemy or the implementation was messed up to begin with (which wouldn't surprise me, to be honest).
Post edited August 28, 2016 by F4LL0UT
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F4LL0UT: EAX was available to third party manufacturers but (if I recall correctly) they were never allowed to support the newest version, always had to be at least one version behind Creative - so I guess that the final version of EAX may only be available on Creative hardware.
I'm reminded that for sound cards newer drivers rarely supported older cards intentionally, forcing people to buy new cards so they get support... even if there was nothing wrong with the cards and the older cards did everything the new cards did. It just came down the card manufacturers were greedy.
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rtcvb32: That assumes you're starting with an x86 system. There's also instructions that exist in some CPU's while later are removed, so there is always going to be some form of emulation. Bochs does full i386 emulation.

Using virtualization is actually fairly recently, when Sun MicroSystems realized they could use the protected mode in a novel way because only half of the modes were actually in use. Before that, it was emulated. And emulation is about... 300x slower. By using a different protection level they could run raw instructions that didn't need protections, and those that did have to request permission which then can be filtered through a safety API and determine what it can/can't do, giving it the sandbox it needs.
I didn't know we where talking about 5-10 years ago.
right now we are talking about virtualization.