Onboard sound or sound card???

[jo4re]

Hi All,
I remember years ago sound cards were a necessity but todays mobo's seem to be pretty good. I play F.E.A.R and have an Asus P5W DH mobo. Should I spend the money for an X-Fi gamer sound card or is the onboard sound just as good? If there is a difference, is it worth $130?

Thanks!!
Joe

 

[mcurphy]

I think both of those questions can only be answered by you.

Here's how I personally feel:

"Is the onboard sound just as good?"

To me it is. I am not an audiophile by any means, and sound qualtiy has never been a noticeable factor to me. I haven't had a soundcard in 5 years, and I couldn't tell the difference from when I did. I think onboard sound has improved over the years, although you will get better quality with a dedicated card if that is important to you.

"Is it worth the money?"

Not to me. I have a cheap set of $30, 2.1 Altec Lansing speakers that I think sound "awesome" with my onboard, lol. I couldn't see spending ~$100 for a soundcard, when I already feel my sound is more than adequate. Now, if you had a great set of klipsch, or Logitech 5500's, or some other higher end speakers, you may want to invest in a nice card to power them.

So really, I think it depends a great deal on how well you can detect quality sound, and whether or not you have the equipment to justify the expensive card.

 

[jo4re]

Good point. I have The Logitech Z5500 5.1 speaker system so they sound pretty good. I don't mind spending the money if I can justify it. Thanks for the response. It does help.

 

[locutus12]

if your using an onboard or stand alone sound card of the cheaper generic variety, they tend to rely on the CPU for all their processing, this can sap up to 10% of a CPU core and as such i would always recommend buying a quality stand alone sound card that is truly capable of hardware processing. im not talking hundreds of dollars / pounds here, any base model creative labs card at say $30 is going to be far far better than a $15 generic job.

 

[Ken90630]

EDIT: Your board has a Realtek ALC882M High Definition Audio 8-channel CODEC, which is prolly a lot better than the junky old AC97 codecs that used to be found with most onboard sound. But I don't know how it compares to some of the better cards out there, nor do I know how much of a drag it is on the CPU.

Creative Labs is the name that has the most recognition when it comes to cards, of course, but they get criticized a lot for having poor drivers that sometimes don't work and play well with others. If I were in your shoes, I'd prolly see if I could find some info (online) on that CODEC your board uses and see what you can find out about it (maybe a review?). Then compare that to some cards and go from there.

In short, I don't think you can generalize that all onboard sound is inferior to that of a separate card, although it would prolly be safe to say that most onboard audio is prolly inferior to high quality cards. Too bad nVidia doesn't make SoundStream anymore -- that was said to provide great onboard sound.

EDIT: Typo (fixed "code" to "codec")

 

[chuckywang]

The reason I want a sound card is because I don't like onboard sound taking up any CPU power.

 

[Captante]

If you do a lot of gaming then theres no question you should go with an X-Fi because it will give you more consistant framerates & higher quality surround sound/EAX especially when using headphones, however theres no reason to spend $130 for a high-end model... just snag the XtremeGamer model for $79 instead.

 

[Roguestar]

A couple of points.
* With dual-core CPUs still not being properly utilised by games (with a few exceptions, such as supreme commander) there is no noticeable drop in framerate when allocating CPU time to onboard sound.
* Onboard sound has progressed in leaps and bounds since 2002 and its associated audio codec terrors. The onboard sound you'll get with most new motherboards is great.
* Unless you have a good speaker system you won't be able to tell the difference. I've got a pair of creative stereo speakers and while good enough for what I do, unless I decide to go with 7.1 surround I'll not be complaining about my onboard.
* External sound cards are flipping expensive! Especially the BS that xtreme gamerz are sold; as Captante said if you're going for one, get the cheapest X-Fi and solve the exaggerated "omg framezloss" problem without breaking the bank for the top of the line model.
* If you do, however, have a good speaker system and want EAX for your games, refer to Captante's post above :thumbsup:.

Edit: F.E.A.R. is not multithreaded and assuming that you've got the Asus PW5 DH because you've got a Core 2 Duo, you've got a spare core for all that audio processing. And the onboard sound on your motherboard is pretty damn good. So I'd say that unless you've got a huge speaker system and really, really want EAX then no, $130 is not worth it because you won't notice the difference. Always judge upgrades, improvements and changes to your system and gaming etc by whether or not, for the price, you will actually see an improvement. The difference between 103FPS and 97FPS on a monitor with 85Hz refresh rate, for example, is nothing to you.