Advantages for a sound card over integrated

monkeysmith

monkeysmith

monkeysmith

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Are there any great advantages over having a dedicated sound card over the integrated motherboard sounds?

Reason I say this, I have a ECS EV2 Lite motherboard with standard built in sound, I also have a creative 24bit live card, but havent bothered to install it, should i?

If i went for one of overclockers xfi cards, would it improve my system much?

I mainly use sound for games, but listen to sound most of the time through a headset.

System: A64 4000+, 2gb ram, x800 Pro

Thanks
 
I was under the impression that the 24-bit Live! cards were Audigies cut-down to use the CPU for sound processing. I have one and it does the job just fine but I've never noticed an improvement over integrated sound.
 
The only point in getting a sound card is for games that need EAX 4.0 or higher (not that many I believe) I have a Xifi card and don't really use it that much as don't have that many games that need it.

If YOUR ears can't tell the difference then I wouldn't bother, and as long as it is fast enough for YOUR eyesight the performance difference isn't worth worrying about.
 
Never used that particular soundcard myself, but my Audigy 2 ZS uses less CPU cycles than using onboard, so games run a little bit quicker, and it definitely sounds better than the onboards I've tried in the past.
 
Just installed my Xtreme Gamer today. Upgraded from realtek onboard and the difference is astonishing.
 
Well i bought an X-Fi last June and i couldnt tell the difference between it and the onboard when hooked up to mah hi-fi.

Plus i hate creative drivers :)
 
bliss said:
Just installed my Xtreme Gamer today. Upgraded from realtek onboard and the difference is astonishing.
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Agree with you 100%, Creative Cards are much better than onboard solutions.
 
3D gaming with headphones is great! You really know where everything is.

X-fi is great for that but mine has numerous annoying problems, many other do too.
 
I write tracks and used an old sblive which was top of the range then.My new mobo didnt like it so i got an audiophile 2496 and couldn`t believe the difference in sound,it was like it suddenly came alive.I tried the onboard sound as a comparison and it just wasn`t a patch on it,muddy,lacking depth and oomph.
As a kindness to my neighbours i write my music with a good pair of sennheiser headphones.
I`d say install the creative anyway and use the spdif connection if you can see if you can tell the difference.A good pair of headphones will show up the difference too.
Pro audio cards arent designed with the gamer in mind for the surrounf fx,hardware accelaration so a creative card will be the way to go.
 
kumar101 said:
Agree with you 100%, Creative Cards are much better than onboard solutions.
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Depends what onboard solution you have really. If it's AC'97 then yes, definitely... but most HD solutions used on motherboards now are pretty damn good. My XFI got relegated to a box when I changed to a motherboard that has Realtek HD audio - couldn't notice any drop in audio quality on my setup, plus their driver packages are more reliable and updated more often. I lose EAX and OpenAL, yes, but don't really care about either of those.
 
hohum said:
Depends what onboard solution you have really. If it's AC'97 then yes, definitely... but most HD solutions used on motherboards now are pretty damn good. My XFI got relegated to a box when I changed to a motherboard that has Realtek HD audio - couldn't notice any drop in audio quality on my setup, plus their driver packages are more reliable and updated more often. I lose EAX and OpenAL, yes, but don't really care about either of those.
Click to expand...
Quite the opposite here. I was very happy with my onboard sound but decided to try a dedicated soundcard.

I have just installed a X-Fi Gamer in my machine. Compared to the onboard Realtek HD audio on my DS3 the X-Fi is vastly superior. I had a few issues with BSODs initially (running Vista) but sorted it now by moving the card to the bottom PCI slot.

I guess that any differences are down to your ears and the speakers/etc that you have so, as already suggested, it's best to just compare and make your own mind up. I'd definitely recommend the X-Fi gamer though.
 
I use 2 cards: The onboard is the audio out for voice chat (TS and Vent), whereas my Creative Live! (yup, that old) is the gaming sounds and microphone input.

S
 
Well I just tried my intergrated sound again, and I was amazing at how crap the sound quality was, so muffled, I was using SPDIF too, back to my X-Fi, I was hoping I would be able to live with the intergrated so I could sell my X-Fi, but no way am I parting from my X-Fi now.

How do you use the intergrated sound and X-Fi at once, I was to use the intergrated for my Mic and X-Fi for headphones / speakers.
 
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