Will bypassing onboard sound increase performance?

[Train]

I was just wondering, since my current mobo has onboard sound, and I play high quality mp3's and play games a lot, would adding a soundcard and turning off the onboard sound increase my overall performance?

 

[sov05]

most onboard sound do a lot of the work in software, using the CPU, and not mostly in hardware, like regular sound cards do. using a seperate sound card helps performance

 

[PowerJoe]

Depends on your on-board sound. If it's a "real" one (like the Creative PCI64 on certain MSI boards), then it's identical in performance and features to the seperate card. If it's a i810/i815/VIA board, and the sound comes from the chipset's AC97 support, you may see some minimal performance gains. Either way, I don't think it's worth it (unless you want 4-speakers or sth)

-PJ