Is it a bad idea, or should I really get an xfi card to go with the speakers?

Sure, you could plug a $400 set of speakers into onboard sound. Just don't complain when they sound like crap

There is no problem plugging them in, but just trust me on this, get any decent sound card with a coax / optical output and you will be very pleased!

Good choice with the z5500 btw, they are totaly amazing!

I have both the X-fi and Z5500 speakers, they sound awesome. You have so many option on your play back, it will blow you away. They almost match my home theater system. I had them hooked up on coax, but switch to direct connect. Between watching vids, listening music, or playing games... you would be better off having a sound card to free up the computer to do what it suppose to do.

well...I haven't bought the speakers yet, I'm still wondering what to do because of budget issues. Ultimately I wanted to run sli in the future with a tv tuner, but sli limits me to having one free pci slot. I think =/. the 8800's take up two slots, so only the pci slot between the two cards and the pcie x1 slot between the video card and the northbridge fan will be free. so that means either the tv tuner or sound card will have to be pcie x1. will there be any issues with a pci card between the video cards and/or the sli bridge?





Is it possible that crappy onboard audio is the reason why my 2.1 speakers are kinda blown? These speakers have lasted me a loooooong time and after using them for a while on this system they sound crappy. hmm

if you run two 8800gts with dual slot coolers, you will have three usable slots, PCI-E x16 (blue), PCI-E x1 (top), and the PCI in between both 8800s

so, you could have a x1, x4, or x8 PCI-E tv-tuner... I run a x1 RAID card in the blue slot because I can increase the speed of the x16 slots, my X-Fi is in the bottom PCI slot because I use single slot full coverage waterblocks

oh yea I forgot about the blue slot...I havent seen any tv tuners for that slot though.

any x1, x4 or x8 PCI-E card will work in the blue slot (x16 size, x8 max bandwidth), so say, for example, if you were using a Thermalright HR-05 SLI/IFX on the NB, and had it with the fins near the graphics card, you wouldn't be able to use the PCI-E x1 slot at the top...

but you could use the blue slot instead...

true. thanks for your help! ill just keep looking around for a good tv tuner...