Sound Blaster Live or On-Board

[ICEVaPa]

Hey people,

Ive got a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 sound card.

Now i was wondering if it is worth using it over the on-board sound.

My Motherboard is a Gigabyte 8IPE1000-L Rev2

What would you do?

Thanks

ICE

 

[imported_Phil]

I have an SBLive! too, and to be honest, I can't tell the difference between that and the onboard sound. At least, not with these speakers.

EAX support is nice, though.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

SB Live for sure.You'll lose performance in games with onboard (cpu hogger). SB Live has EAX. Also there's DEFINATELY a noticible difference between Onboard and SB Live. I guess I'm just an audiophile

 

[sandorski]

It's a push. SB Live is very old and many Onboard solutions are equal to it these days in Sound Quality. If you were talking the Audigy line that would be different though.

 

[ICEVaPa]

lol Thanks guys...

Put my SB back in...

 

[Sforsyth]

did you notice a difference at all ?

 

[corkyg]

Yeah . . . your ears are the judge.

 

[Continuity27]

There won't be that much of a quality difference between the two, but the SB Live! will generally tax the CPU less in doing audio processing. Some on-board sound solutions also don't tax the CPU that much either... I'd rather go with that than the SB Live!.

And again it also depends on your speakers, it's exactly like video cards and monitors to a degree. What does it matter if you're getting 200 vs 300 FPS if your (CRT) monitor can only handle a 60hz refresh rate? Speakers is usually what limits people as far as audio quality. The other thing to consider, again, is CPU utilization.