Is it worth getting a sound card for gaming?

Fledge

Fledge

Fledge

Associate
Joined
9 Jan 2009
Posts
851
Location
Olney
I'm thinking of building a first time rig and I want to know, is there much difference between having and not having one?:confused:
At the moment I don't have one and my 2.1 speakers are spewing out perfectly decent sound, rarely there's a bit of a shiddle but toehr than that it's all fine.
 
Buying a dedicated sound card will greatly improve your sound quality over onboard sound, no doubt about that.

However, your sound will only be as good as your speakers. No point buying a £100 creative x-fi if you using your lcd displays speakers or cheap speakers.
 
Got to say I found the difference with dedicated Xfi card in games was not huge, and I found the card a bit of a bugger to set up.
 
Id tend to agree with zillo, I had a sound card on old system and the difference was barely noticable, imo, unless youre into sound editing and , as cje said, spend a decent whack on speakers too (£300+) then its not worth it
 
Plus you open up possible IRQ conflicts. Even disabling the onboard device does not circumvent the problem in all cases. If you decide to get a dedicated sound card, try to get a mobo that doesnt have one built in.
 
On board sound is much better now than it was with the ac97 that we all used to suffer a few years ago, but these days I would stay on board with £50 speakers or buy XFi and spend £150 on speakers.

Comes off someone with xfi extreme music on z5500s on one pc and onboard with £20 creative speakers on another.
 
Harrier2569 said:
Plus you open up possible IRQ conflicts. Even disabling the onboard device does not circumvent the problem in all cases. If you decide to get a dedicated sound card, try to get a mobo that doesnt have one built in.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure the days of IRQ conflicts are gone due to the fact that you can have more than one device per IRQ now. (Though I could be completely wrong. Especially at this time at night!). And its virtually impossible not to get a mobo without onboard sound now. (Server boards maybe?)
 
My wife and I have near identical setups but she has onboard sound (IP35 Pro) and I have an XFI Extreme Music. Each of us has a set of Aego 2.1's and I found the difference between our computers very easy to hear when playing the same song.

(to put in perspective, I cannot usually hear the difference between flac and a VB MP3 so I'm not a huge audiophile.)


I'm sure they would both sound like crap with crap spekers though.
 
I wouldn't really bother with a soundcard if it's purely for gaming, onboard sound is getting a lot better and will be fine for this. If your watching HD movies, an avid music fan or sound recording then I'd suggest getting one (obviously as it's been said, only if you have the speakers to match). I've got the xonar dx, I regard it as one of my best purchases, for a mid-range card I'm happy with the difference it's given me over the realtek HD onboard sound, especially when watching HD-DVD or Blu-ray.
 
I bought a cheap soundcard (x-fi extreme audio) that I use with crative T-20's for pc use, and also hook up to a kenwood av amp and tannoy speakers for movies/entertaining and I cant say theres any difference over onboard in quality per-se, ( I have a pretty moder motherboard ).

One big improvement it has made though, is that theres no noise interference that I used to get with the onboard, if i were to jack the volume up, I could hear what sounded like a 56k modem in the background when the music was quiet, maybe interference from fans or the hard drives i dunno - but thats completley gone now, sounds perfectly clean....so im happy as that was the main reason for me buying a dedicated sound card.

My advice would be to build your new rig first, then evaluate the sound - you may find you are pleasently surprised with modern onboard sound. If you do decide to upgrade I would get a decent set of speakers first, and then consider a soundcard if you still have issues.
 
Tripnologist said:
My wife and I have near identical setups but she has onboard sound (IP35 Pro) and I have an XFI Extreme Music. Each of us has a set of Aego 2.1's and I found the difference between our computers very easy to hear when playing the same song.
...
Click to expand...


Some difference likley to be because of the default sound profiles of the various drivers. Some adjsutments could improve the onboard at least a little.

For gaming creative etc have a measurably lower hit on cpu cycles at equivalent quality settings also more and better EAX HD audio processing settings if the games support it. Audio effects quality is very variable even in the best games.
 
errata said:
For gaming creative etc have a measurably lower hit on cpu cycles at equivalent quality settings also more and better EAX HD audio processing settings if the games support it. Audio effects quality is very variable even in the best games.
Click to expand...

Is that true in vista though
 
I've just splashed on an X-Fi Titanium, the first sound card I've bought in around 10 years. Mainly because I've been playing a few FPS games and wanted to try positional sound.

I'm only using a cheap yamaha TSS-10 5.1 package I got second hand for £15 but it sounds ok, good enough for gaming and unlike the onboard the surround sound actually works and you can hear something happen behind you etc.

There is also a feature which mimics surround sound using a pair of stereo headphones which seems to work though I assume it's some kind of voodoo.

For casual gaming or with a 2.1 set of speakers it's hard to recommend.

For anything more.... I'd say buy one, but get PCI-E and it will last a few builds

AD
 
Personally if you just fancy all the EAX effects in games or if your onboard audio suffers from stutter/static interference, then a dedicated soundcard will be much better. Otherwise onboard sound is good enough for the basics of things.

I still use an old SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 PCI card because my onboard audio keeps getting interference from the other components on my motherboard (The onboard soundchip is right above my PCI-E graphics card slot), and so gaming, watching movies or listening to music is a pain.
 
If you just use speakers and not headphones then no, it wouldn't be worth it as you'll most likely not notice any difference, especially if there cheap ones, and it'd be best to stick with onboard sound. If you have a decent pair of headphones then yes, it'll be worth it.
 
Last edited:
I have a £36 set of Creative 5.1 speakers (very cheap) and I upgraded from Gigabyte onboard sound (can't remember but I presume Realtek) to an X-Fi Xtreme Music, and I certainly noticed the difference in the ease with which you can position sounds and the quality of the game effects. The sound quality itself was moderately improved but not staggeringly so, but the positional aspect of the audio and things like wind, bullets, etc was vastly improved thanks to the EAX.

The X-Fi also allows other things that onboard may not such as a handy feature to record exactly whatever you are listening to through your speakers.

That said if you're not sure and you already have a modern motherboard with onboard sound and are running average speakers, a dedicated sound card should be one of the last things you upgrade imho.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom