Do you use a sound card for games?

Onboard sound will allways be good enough for me.

I would rather spend the money on a better speaker system/amp.

currently I have a standard cable connecting my amp to the PC via the headphone socket at the back.

If I wanted an upgrade I would buy a 7.1 home cinema amp/reciever and connect it to the ATI GFX card using HDMI and get fully uncompressed HD audio.

I am not that clued up on soundcards but I would rather the PC just output the best stuff it can and then buy a decent amp, that way you can use it for other stuff aswell as the PC.
 
Problem with on-board is the snr is crap. There's a distinct lack of clarity i.e is sound flat. Might not seem a lot but if you fire up BC2, play a couple hours then switch to on-board you'll realise you can no longer tell the difference between certain weapons, the direction of that sniper or even the direction of tanks which are virtually a low hum rather than the clattering they should be. I say this because most people seem to have it, and it's audio is superb. Several years ago asus spent months telling people eaxs days were numbered and that dolby would become the standard for games. I honestly don't believe the majority of people even register the dolby splash screen when they fire up the game but boy it makes a difference.

If all you do is browse the web and watch the odd youtube video then it's probably more than adequate although youtube has improved it's encoding 10 fold of these past years and there's a noticeable difference on 720p videos audio with a sound card. Blurays can use samples up to 192KHz so on-board sitting at 44 with a low snr means you miss a lot really.

Still, you need half decent speakers which thankfully aren't so expensive these days. A £50 2.1 from logitech is more than adequate. As for the creative/asus argument I think it's mute. Both have good cards at different budgets, but the numerous dolby stamps and chips on a xonar dx simply cannot be beet at the price range. Although the front panels of my last x-fi were useful, getting functional drivers on vista then w7 was a nightmare.

Had to use on-board for a few days last time I switch motherboards and all it did was remind me that listening to music on it was like having a sound card with a towel over my head. They're improved yes, but still abysmal compared to the dolby approved cards that can be had for sub £60.
 
I have an ASUS Crosshair IV motherboard which is the top of the line ASUS AMD board. It also has very good onboard sound, as you would expect as ASUS make sound cards.

I bought a Xonar DG a few months ago and I can tell you now the difference is massive. I started hearing things in BC2 I did not know were there before.

Fantastic upgrade for £20.00. Will never go back to onboard.
 
I haven't had the xfi-forte installed for a while, on board sound is very good. I can't tell that much but then again, I suspect the speakers are holding it back somewhat.
 
Short answer: No, Long answer: I use Asus' onboard audio, I find it fine enough for my uses and soundcards are not really needed anymore in my humble opinion.
 
Used to have a d2x (the pci-e one) which was amazing to use, used to have it connected up to my old stereo to play music as the cd player was broken in it which was quality! Made games more fun too :)

Miss having a pc some times...
 
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