MSI NEO2 Nforce3 motherboard - onboard sound vs. good sound card

[CalvinHobbes]

How good or bad is the onboard sound solution on this motherboard?

The board has the RealTek ALC850 audio chip. In the Anandtech benchmark they show that some implementations of the ALC850 don't have too much CPU utilization but other do.
Does the driver affect this at all?

I was wondering if anyone has done their own benchmark comparison between the onboard sound vs. a sound card.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Anyone?

 

[PingSpike]

I keep trying to find more benchmarks for this kind of thing. Typically onboard codec solutions of anything use the cpu to do their calculations. I know I had some benchmarks that showed a AC97 codec delivering a 16% performance hit in some applications. However, newer solutions probably have less of a hit and may even be neglible. Still...I'm not an audiophile and still run my SB Live! value pci card for sound. But I don't have any solid numbers to back up my decision to use it over the onboard sound.

 

[Peter]

It's not like the CODEC is influencing the CPU load. It's totally a question of how much of its own brain the sound ENGINE has. This engine is either inside the core chipset, or on a discrete PCI chip. When the engine is just a stupid DMA pump that expects readily cooked sound data to be shifted into the CODEC, then everything else needs to be done using the CPU.

Chipset-integrated solutions may or may not be like this, just like discrete PCI solutions (who also use AC97 codecs, btw). Brain or no brain is a function of WHAT it is, not WHERE. For example, older ALi, SiS and NVidia chipsets have had quite intelligent sound controllers in their south bridges, while VIA and Intel have always had - and everyone else has been reverting to - primitive data movers that leave the sound processing to the CPU.

 

[seanmcd]

what's more important to you? Sound quality or FPS? I doubt you would notice the FPS/CPU utilization difference.

But I would notice the sound difference for sure...

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Thanks for the info Peter.
Seanmcd, I really don't think the sound quality is bad on the NEO2 board. I guess I would have to compare it to a sound card to know what I'm missing. Then of course I need new speakers, etc.

 

[Ike0069]

I thought the sound was fine, but for some reason I couldn't get it to work with TeamSpeak, so I bought a cheap sound card. Sound quality was about the same, then I bought a refurbed Audigy and I really like it. Definitely improved the gaming audio.

So onboard sound is OK, but a good SC will definitely improve the quality.