difference from a onboard sound and Audigy2

[faye]

Hi,

i am about to change my motherboard, a very old motherboard which only support P3. but this setting i have a PCI Audigy2 and moded to DTSES, DD

and the board i am going to use is 6.1 supported.. so is there a real big difference on 3d games like HL2?

I don't nkow current's board capability, EAX or whatever...

please gimme advice should i get a cheap sound card for P3 and move the A2 card to the newer board? or the nowadays onboard sound has no difference at all

 

[Vette73]

If the board has onboard just use that and move the A2 to the new board.

Or get a Envy soundcard if you want better quality. They go for around $20-30 range, sometimes OfficeMax(???) has them on sale after rebate

 

[faye]

Originally posted by: Marlin1975
If the board has onboard just use that and move the A2 to the new board.

Or get a Envy soundcard if you want better quality. They go for around $20-30 range, sometimes OfficeMax(???) has them on sale after rebate

Hmm...

i mean the board that i am getting has onboard sound... but the current doesn't.. so i use A2 for my current board.
but, i can't find any officemax nearby though. any soundcard advices?

 

[Vette73]

What is the new board? Also what do you plan on doing with the new board/system.

My board has the VIA Envy onboard, a hardware sound card. So I use it. Soundstorm is good, and if juts doing light music of gaming most AC97 will be ok also.

BUT if you have some hardcore spekares and/or do video/sound editing then you should get a decent hardware soundcard weather that be onboard or off, and AC97 would not work then.

 

[screw3d]

I think you should just use your Audigy 2, especially if you are using analog speakers

 

[RussianSensation]

Audigy 2 is the best sounding videocard for gaming (besides Audigy 2 ZS) and smokes Evny. Evny is a lot better for music (read M-Audio Revolution). Audigy 2 supports EAX 1-4.0 and it runs sound off the hardware so it takes a slight performance hit in contrast to any Evny based soundcard.

Since you already have the Audigy 2, scrape the onboard sound on the new motherboard and use the Audigy 2. There is no point for you to spend money on ANY soundcard esp since Audigy 2 is amazing and considering you will never play doom 3 and half 2 with the cpu and graphics card you have right now so maybe you should consider major upgrades before fantasizing about playing those 2 games at an enjoyable performance level.

Onboard sound does not support EAX at all and often experiences crackling and other noise.

My suggestion is if you plan to play HL2 buy new ram, new cpu, new motherboard and a new videocard when HL2 comes out.

 

[Odeen]

Guys,

Keep in mind that the Via Envy line is just software audio. It doesn't do 3d accelerated sound (DS3D, EAX) without the CPU's help. So, for features, Via Envy and onboard sound are pretty much identical. The sound quality of an Envy-based solution, however, is better.

For gaming on an older board, an A2 is a good addition. The reason for that is that it's not a CPU hog - it offloads all the 3d audio calculation onto the soundcard processor, instead of making the slow main processor take care of it.

So, use the A2. It'll provide you with a frame rate boost that you will need.