Does USING MSI Pro2a Sound Card slow down your Perfomance?

[mhan80]

My friend said onboard sound card works the motherboard to hard thus slows the the performance of the cpu, that is why SB live does so well because it has its own board. Can I just get a cheap sound card to ease the mb or is what my friend saying wrong?

 

[Shooters]

From what I understand, the onboard sound will use cycles from your cpu to process the sound. However, in the case with the SoundBlaster Live!, it's not so much the fact that it has its own board but rather that it has its own processor on the card which processes sound. This frees up your cpu when compared to onboard sound. I don't know exactly how much of a difference it will make, but I would imagine not very much. If you're going to get a cheapo sound card just to get more performance out of your cpu, the I would say don't bother. The sound won't be much better, and you probably won't see any improvement in performance. Why not get a SoundBlaster Live! Value? You can pick one up on pricewatch for about $40, and it will sound tons better than the onboard sound.....provided that you have good speakers to go with it.

 

[HellRaven]

Shooters is correct.

Not only will the onboard sound on that motherboard eat up alot more CPU cycles, it will also sound terrible. Only use the onboard sound if your building a server or workstation, otherwise the Sb Live! series is fairly cheap these days and offers many more features, good sound quality, and won't eat up nearly as many cpu cycles. You may also get a software package depending on what model you get.