is the onboard sound on a ga z77x ud5h, better then an old soundblaster

oneofmanyjoes

oneofmanyjoes

oneofmanyjoes

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hello to those of you that i haven't talked to before... which is all but one of you

the first of many silly questions from me, but the only one about sound

my new build is a gigabyte ga z77x ud5h, it has on-board sound, i found in my house my old sound blaster live 5.1 digital sound card

which is i reckon.... 9 years old

i do have a set of 5.1 speakers.... but im not too bothered about them... so considering that i will be mostly listening to sound through headphones, is there any appreciable point in using the old sound card aside form the 5.1 it will give me??


joe
 
I also had a old soundblaster card from 2004. I have a Gigabyte z77X-UD3H motherboard and I tried both the onboard and the sound card. I could barely tell the difference... Only a slight clarity with the sound card but noting major.

The UD3H also has 'cheaper' on board sound than the UD5H :)
 
The SB Live! is 13-14 years now, and was released around 1998/9. While I'm all for using a sound card over onboard audio, such an old card isn't going to be any better than modern onboard audio, so I'd stick with that.

Plus, onboard will certainly be easier, as you will more than likely need to use Daniel K modified drivers to get the SB Live! working, due to Creative not bothering with their older cards.
 
X-Fi's are much newer cards, and certainly better than the old SB cards, so yes I'd say that would be definitely better than any onboard audio. There may be some people who may find onboard audio as good. You're always going to get those people. One guy thought a Xonar Essence he bought was no better than his onboard audio. ;)
 
I did some testing between the ALC888 codec and the Soundblaster Audigy SE and found the audigy to have slightly better bass, while the ALC888 was better at everything else. There was a lot less cracking and static with the Audigy too. So considering the audigy is newer I wouldn't bother changing, especialy when you factor drivers into the equation.

As for the x-fi, I have one and it's a lot better than the ALC889A in my PC.

EDIT:

The ALC898 has the following according to the datasheet:

High performance DACs with 110dB signal-to-noise ratio(A-weighting)
High performance ADCs with 104dB signal-to-noise ration (A-weighting).

This is VERY good for onboard audio and beats the ALC889A which I think sounds very good for onboard sound. It will be a lot better than the soundblaster live imo.
 
Last edited:
spluff said:
how about the UD3H and pci xfi fatal1ty - much difference?
Click to expand...
Maybe with the HD800 headphones there might be a noticeable difference but I'm sure loads of people with bad hearing wouldn't tell them apart.

The 110dB realtek in the UD5H is fractionally better than VIA 110dB in the D3H models.

The X-fi has 115dB stereo SNR. The Xonar DS is 106dB and I can't tell the difference between them.
 
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