Which Sound?

[Cook1]

I have a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live 5.1 PCI Card...would this be better then my onboard sound which is... http://www.biostar-usa.com/mbdetails.asp?model=m7vit+pro

Thanks

 

[Ryoga]

If you have good quality speakers you might notice a difference, but your on-board is 6 channel (aka, pretty good quality). I wouldn't be able to tell. Some people claim that on-board audio uses more CPU, but that shouldn't be the case since the only difference is that one device attaches to the PCI bus and the other is partly intrgrated into the chipset and partly in a dedicated IC.

 

[oldman420]

although your onboard sound isnt the best out there it should still sound fine and unless you are a quality freak you will have a hard time telling the diff between onboard and sb sound
as for performance i think the onboard is better as it doesnt share the already generly crowded pci bus

 

[NichowA]

As stated earlier, unless you have a nice set of speakers, or you want to connect a 5-channel or better setup and use a microphone, onboard should be fine.

Personally, I'm an audiophile. I have a set of klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1 speakers connected to an external sound card (I didn't want internal because it can produce low levels of interference). If you had a setup like this, you would definitely notice a difference between onboard sound and using my card. The PCI card you have is a little old itself, though, so even if you did have a nice set of speakers, you would probably want to buy one of the newer cards instead of using either of those. If not though, it isn't worth the hassle to mess with installing a PCI card for a performance increase that you probably wouldn't ever notice.

 

[cheapherk]

Usually, a PCI card is a better option for better sound. An exception is nvidis's SoundStorm on some nforce2 boards. Personally, I'd stick in your SoundBlaster Live! If you have crappy speakers, you might not notice the difference.