Realtek ALC889A sounds very bad in games. No EAX, no equalizer, no bass/treble.

Gigabyte GA-EX38-DQ6
Vista Premium x64

I was hoping that this new HD-Audio codec would be good enough, as I had too much problem with Creative cards. The HD-Audio sounds okay for music, but Realtek and Gigabyte don't give an equalizer, nor even bass/treble controls. All I have are equalizer "presets" (Rock/Pop/etc...). There is no way to tweak them to my satifaction. Come on Realtek and Gigabyte! Get your act together!

Coming from an Audigy 2, this on-board audio sounds terrible in games. Games sound very flat, with no acoustics or reverb.

Anyone have advice on a compatible sound card with Vista x64, that has room occlousion and other reverb effects in games?

Realtek does not provide 10-band EQ support for any of their Vista drivers despite having it down on their feature listing. There's probably not enough demand for it in the market. There's nothing you can do about it except dual booting into XP.

Yeah. Sucks, I know.