Avoid onboard sound and onboard VGA at all cost

PC166

Banned
May 5, 2002
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Because they share resources with your chipset, with your cpu and uses your dimm memory bandwidth as well, they tend to drag your system to a crawl when you try to play even the simplest game such as age of empire II. They may seem like a bargain but even a 1gig or 2gig processor will not be enough to keep it from lagging and pausing every few sec. so what I did, is disabled the onboard sound and onboard vga on my 1gig computer and voila! every thing now fly like a rocket, no more pausing, no more chop up sound!
 

PowerMacG5

Diamond Member
Apr 14, 2002
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I use onboard sound with my P4 2.0A system and it does not lag at all. I did not want to go out and spend extra money on a sound card when I don't have a surround sound system. The onboard sound does not interrupt my game play, cause disruptions or any other problems. Onboard VGA on the other hand is different. On any motherboard with onboard VGA, yes they use your processor and RAM resources, but onboard Audio does not affect any performance on my system.
 

kursplat

Golden Member
May 2, 2000
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did you try disabling each, one at a time to see which one is giving you the speed ? if you were trying to play anything more demanding than freecell with the onboard video, your head HAS to be hurtin' from beatting it on that wall.
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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You know, there are people out there who actually WORK with their computers. The one thing these
people avoid at all cost is cost.

Buy something that suits your needs, that's the rule. GHz isn't everything, although Intel want you to believe so.

regards, Peter
 

WhiteMouse

Senior member
May 30, 2000
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Many onboard audio use hardware solution, like Creative Labs 5880 and C-media. A stand alone CL sound card will give you more speed? I don't think so.

Most onboard video is poor, but how about those NVIDIA nForce 420-D chipset based mobo?
 

Harvey

Administrator<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
35,057
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I don't think so. I've seen terrible onboard video performance from Intel chipsets intended for cheap computers. OTOH, my system recognizes the onboard Creative chipset as a Sound Blaster PCI-128. It uses the same software and uses resources the same way as some of my friends' machines with similar plug in cards. I've also seen onboard video done with the same chipsets (ATI, etc.) as found on plug in cards, and they appear to work the same way.

I think it depends on what is integrated and how it is implemented. There is no reason it can't be done well.
 

zobskyX

Member
Oct 16, 2001
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I agree with PC166.

1. The detrimental impact of onboard video is much more than that of onboard sound
2. However, I have seen the onboard sound on my MB reduce the performance just a LITTLE bit, as opposed to my PCI soundblaster sound. Of course it is probably because the onboard sound on my SOYO board is AC97 which is some kind of soundblaster emulator (correct me if I'm wrong). However, on some other PCs I have worked on, games became unplayable after a few minutes with onboard sound (not sure of the MB model, ...COMPAQ PCs), trying to use several desktop applications slowed the PC to a crawl. .... i solved the issue by de-activating the onboard sound and using a cheap $5 PCI sound card instead.
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
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oh well, all those experts ...

AC97 is a digital audio bus, used to interconnect sound engines and analog codecs. The whole spectrum of sound solutions uses it, from Soundblaster Audigy down to the most primitve, CPU driven solutions.

Onboard sound engines might be from any category. Someone saying "the mainboard uses AC97 sound" might as well say "I'm clueless". There are intelligent chipset integrated solutions (like Trident 4D-Wave found in ALi and SiS chipsets) as well as CPU driven separate PCI chips (like that SB-128).

Integrated graphics units usually live in system RAM, which makes them bandwidth limited. So? There are enough people out there who never do any 3D gaming, and if they do, are happy enough at low resolutions - after all, any given game console on your TV uses even lower resolutions.

Like it or not, these boards do have their market. A huge big market. Problem with folks like PC166 is they didn't buy a system that suits their needs and then come here to rant about the "crap" they bought, rather than slap themselves for not thinking beforehand.

regards, Peter
 

jiffylube1024

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
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It's pretty obvious that "onboard" video (aside from nForce video using a GF2 MX or above) is pretty unsatisfactory for even some of the more simple games, however most people who own computers don't play video games; certainly not demanding ones like Quake/Unreal based games. As for onboard sound, as was said above, it varies from which type of onboard sound you have. The whole SoundBlaster Live! series steals quite a bit of CPU resources itself, and aren't that much better/worse than certain onboard sound chips.

It's true that for any serious gamer (even casual ones that play demanding games), onboard VGA will not cut it (save for a few), but that doesn't mean it's true for everyone.
 

PC166

Banned
May 5, 2002
138
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Motherboard with only onboard sound or non intergrated at all is actually cheapest and spend the rest 8-15 buck on cheap sound card and VGA that will not be a burden on your processor, memory bandwidth and chipset . My budget pc running at 366 and 500mhz was crawling like a turtle by paying a little more which cost alot less then buying a new cpu and motherboard that anyone can afford so there was no need to pay for a costly upgrade. Makes perfect since right? Just to be able to play some games decently or even surfing the web while playing mp3 or encoding movies. Usually onboard VGA cost only a little less then buying a cheap 4meg AGP card like 5 bucks and I don't see how saving a few buck help offset that. I have Cyrix C3 running at 770 mhz and 800mhz they were also crawing like a turtle and the culprit was onboard sound, disabled and voila! everything is flying like it should comparable to a celeron 733mhz.
 

getbush

Golden Member
Jan 19, 2001
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<< Makes perfect since right? >>



No, it does not. Your "sentences" make my head hurt.
 

WhiteMouse

Senior member
May 30, 2000
623
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<<

<< Makes perfect since right? >>



No, it does not. Your "sentences" make my head hurt.
>>

LOL :D
 

Peter

Elite Member
Oct 15, 1999
9,640
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Cheap sound cards may be as much a burden on the CPU as some of the free onboard solutions are - there are just as many CPU driven PCI sound chips as there are controller driven onboard solutions. Plus cards always are a PCI bus bandwidth hog while chipset integrated sound is not. Besides, ALi and some of the VIA and SiS chipsets aren't CPU driven audio, they integrate actual sound engines. Intel's onboard sound always is CPU driven.

And you're not seriously suggesting using one of those old 4-MByte AGP cards (which usually use three to five year old technology) instead of the modern graphics cores in today's integrated chipsets? The latter are bandwidth limited, sure, but no worse bandwidth limited than those old cards that use no better than 90 to 100 MHz SDRAM either - and at least you're not stuck with a useless 4 MBytes.

Well it's pretty obvious you don't know what you're talking about.

regards, Peter
 

mudboy

Senior member
Mar 21, 2000
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Saying that is like saying "Don't buy a car with a diesel engine, it's slow and noisy" It might generally be true, but it is certainly not true in all cases. Besides, most people who want to play hardware-demanding games recognize that they'll need a real video solution.

Pete
 

Hakeem

Junior Member
Apr 30, 2002
17
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Look Onboard Audio solutions are not usualy as much resource hungry as Graphics Solutions are... specialy those which are integrated into the northbridge of your board alongwith your memory controller...

So if you have a good solution on your board like CMidia or CT5880 don't cry for Creative PCI128 or Zoltrix Nightingale.

Yes, Audigy is a hardware solution, that is why extigy works even your system is off. :)

Take Care.