Onboard Sound VS Audigy 2 ZS

[Quiksilver]

Well I plan on purchasing this motherboard and I am curious if I should salvage my Audigy 2 ZS sound card in my current rig, or just go ahead and use the onboard sound.

I currently spend most of my time gaming (fps's) and listening to music (rock/metal) so watching tv shows/movies is not important to me, so if onboard sound wasn't that great in that area I would not care.

Lastly, for speakers I just use a simple 2.1 setup. Specifically these speakers

So, with that said, anyone here have any opinions or have a similar setup and wouldn't mind seeing if they notice a difference?

**Edit**
Also, for gaming I am mainly playing CSS which I don't even think supports EAX, so it would not be that big of deal.

 

[tcsenter]

Nobody can tell you what will sound better to you. You'll have them both for comparison purposes.

 

[Sylvanas]

It's pretty subjective as some people will tell you different things on this topic. I made a large thread a while back noting that I was so pleased to be using onboard sound (Realtek ALC 888, I would assume that DFI 790FX has it aswell, I am using the MSI K9A2 Plat 790FX) as It sounds better to me than any sound cards I have had previously so I will never be using a dedicated sound card again. My 2c .

 

[Blazer7]

That board uses the ALC885 8 channel HD audio codec which is not exactly the same as the 888. You can find out about the various differences between Realtek?s audio codecs here.

Since you already have the Audigy you can try both. After all and like tcsenter said nobody can tell you what will sound better to you. For the record and like Sylvanas I am very pleased with the 888.

 

[BassBomb]

Originally posted by: Blazer7
That board uses the ALC885 8 channel HD audio codec which is not exactly the same as the 888. You can find out about the various differences between Realtek?s audio codecs here.

Since you already have the Audigy you can try both. After all and like tcsenter said nobody can tell you what will sound better to you. For the record and like Sylvanas I am very pleased with the 888.

Thought I would chime in too, 888 for me did not work too well (speaker popping, cutoff frequency) but my Audigy2 is fine.

 

[geokilla]

I didn't find a difference between my onboard sound and my M2N-E. However, I'm gonna keep using the Audigy 2. If there is one thing I noticed, is that it's hard to find the perfect equalizer settings. I'd have to spend some time tweaking the equalizer settings to find that setting, but I'm lazy.

When I was using onboard, everything sounded fine too. My onboard was provided by SoundMAX.

 

[Quiksilver]

I think Im going to give the onboard a shot when the mobo arrives. From the realtek link it seems to be only 1 generation behind on their top audio codec so it couldn't be all that bad. As I bonus I'd be gaining the ability to use front panel audio at least

 

[BDawg]

How good is the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme HD Audio on some MSI boards?