Sound card

[thecoffeeguy]

Hopefully, simple question and easy answer.

Just build a AMD 945 rig with ASRock Extreme3 mobo.

I know it has onboard sound card, but since I game a lot and listen to music a lot (in a 2.1 setup as well as headphones), should I think about buying a sound card and disabling onboard sound?

What are the benefits? Drawbacks?

Ok, if getting a soundcard should be an option, any suggestions? I dont need anything remotely crazy as I just have 2.1 and headphones. No HTPC hooked up either.

I know creative as been known to bloat the crud out of their drivers. Alternatives to creative?

Thanks.

TCG

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Howdy, you aren't an audiophile else you would not be asking. So, stick with onboard audio and you will be fine.

 

[lxskllr]

Onboard sound has gotten pretty damned good over the years. If you're happy with it, it's good enough. I have an xfi fatal1ty, and while it's a good card, I feel like I wasted my money. The front access is nice for hooking up headphones and stuff, but I really don't use it that much; certainly not $120 of use.

 

[Ruger22C]

I also have a fatal1ty and I LOVE it.
The drivers are somewhat unreliable.
But they're right, you're using (probably cheap) 2.1, it's not likely to be worth the investment to you. However, if you listen to a lot of music and you like to "tune" it to your liking, you have more options with an X-Fi card.

Why don't you upgrade?

To answer you,
Pros:
In games where you can set the sound quality, i.e. BF2, the difference is absolutely amazing!. Good equalizer. Able to set surround sound on audio that's only mono, stereo, etc. Smart Volume Management (Awesome!). Good software, i.e. recording "What U Hear." EAX 5.0. Quick access to functions (software).

Cons:
Money. Might have to fight with the drivers.


I remember when I first bought this card. I was using onboard audio for 7.1 and it destroyed my frame rate.. This card really saved me some grief . I doubt that's much of an issue today, though.

 

[swerus]

Onboard sound has gotten pretty damned good over the years. If you're happy with it, it's good enough. I have an xfi fatal1ty, and while it's a good card, I feel like I wasted my money. The front access is nice for hooking up headphones and stuff, but I really don't use it that much; certainly not $120 of use.

Umm no onboard is still still horrible.

Howdy, you aren't an audiophile else you would not be asking. So, stick with onboard audio and you will be fine.

But what he said.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Onboard sound has been fine for years. Unless you hear noise / hiss through your headphones you won't get improved sound quality from a sound card.

Unless you buy $100/foot dihydrogen monoxide infused speaker cables and use vacuum tube amps, in which case you'd connect the optical or coax digital out to your home audio system. Using a Monster optical cable with biphasic polarity inversion for better-aligned photons.

 

[thecoffeeguy]

Thanks guys.
wasn't sure if adding a sound card would help with sound in games and music.
The one I have appear "decent", but still might replace it.

If anything, doesn't adding a sound card reduce any strain on the CPU?

I do have an older Creative Xi-Fi game card I have been thinking of dropping in the case.
Just seems the drivers suck a bit from creative.

Thanks.

 

[lxskllr]

Any cpu use would be negligible. You'd have more usage from sidebar gadgets doing their thing, and routine self maintenance. FWIW, my xfi drivers have been pretty solid. I don't use the card for everything it can do, but game playing, and listening to audio has been fine.

 

[Maximilian]

Thanks guys.
wasn't sure if adding a sound card would help with sound in games and music.
The one I have appear "decent", but still might replace it.

If anything, doesn't adding a sound card reduce any strain on the CPU?

I do have an older Creative Xi-Fi game card I have been thinking of dropping in the case.
Just seems the drivers suck a bit from creative.

Thanks.

Nah not anymore, used to be that games could use the chip on the soundcard but i dont think any modern games use hardware sound acceleration, the x-fi chip would only come into play with an older game and older games dont even tax todays dual core and quad core cpus making that chip worthless nowadays.

 

[mfenn]

Onboard sound has been fine for years. Unless you hear noise / hiss through your headphones you won't get improved sound quality from a sound card.

Unless you buy $100/foot dihydrogen monoxide infused speaker cables and use vacuum tube amps, in which case you'd connect the optical or coax digital out to your home audio system. Using a Monster optical cable with biphasic polarity inversion for better-aligned photons.

This.

Anybody who has a system where they could actually perceive a difference is going to be using a digital signal from the PC anyway, thus bypassing all that fancy DAC and opamp hardware on the sound card anyway.