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Best on-board audio?

R

route66

Senior member
My P4 motherboard of 3 years died (exploded caps, tried to replace but no luck) so now I'm looking at s939. Good audio is important to me, but I'm also a cheapskate. It seems that no-one really reviews the quality of on-board audio on motherboards. I have a 10 year old SB Live! Value PCI card, is there some s939 motherboards with better quality (better sound quality, CPU overhead, etc) on-board audio, or should I continue to keep using this PCI card?

Thanks.
 
I'd go with the SB Live 5.1

I think onboard uses 2% of cpu resources?
well a seperate sound card gives you more options on settings

It depends on your speakers

The card can be found for 12 shipped(used)
 
I'm almost positive that most motherboards still only include audio as an afterthought, just for the sake of including it. A discrete card (as long as it's a decent one, which any reasonably recent Sound Blaster is) will give you lower CPU utilization, and higher quality sound since the DAC's used for integrated audio are generally not that great. Stick with using the SB Live card you have, it'll be fine (and probably better than 90% of onboard audio out there). 🙂
 
PCI soundcards almost always have higher quality Digital to Analog converters on them, and also are far more isolated from motherboard electrical noise. On board sound is OK for basics, and make a great part of a value build (especially when the on-board audio in question is Azalia based), but for more serious listening and gaming, you are better off to keep that SB Live or go with:

Chaintech AV-710 (VIA Envy24HT-S 24bit/192Khz), which when using the Wolfson DAC is a knock-out for 2.1 sound at $24.
BlueGears Digital 7.1 X-Mystique, which is unquestionably one of the best sound cards under $100 out there today ($99 at NewEgg) and also does 24bit/192Khz
gag..wretch...gag...perhaps a Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS....I had to struggle to say that one....
 
Thanks for all your insight, I will keep using the SB Live Value PCI card. Interesting, I've had that card for 8 years and it's probably the best $100 investment in computer parts I bought considering that any other part I've had in the last 10 years has either crapped out or become extremely obsoleted.
 
I like the Turtle Beach mostly because it's a much more streamlined install than the Creative cards. The on-board sound on this DFI suits me fine, I only use headphones anyway.
 
My only problem with Creative is that, for being such a large company, their drivers are terrible. Even on a fresh install they can give you issues.

I'll have to look into these BlueGears guys...I'm in the market for a new soundcard, and I was wondering if there's stuff out there that does it better than Creative...
 
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