Onboard audio ?

dousland70 · 30 Jun 2007 at 10:59

Hi

Does having a sound card installed make a system perform better in gaming etc rather than having a onboard audio installed ? Im just thinking about the CPU load from onboard sound

MofoKilla · 30 Jun 2007 at 11:01

yeah the system will perform better with a seperate sound card rather than onboard as it takes some of the load off the cpu.

thepigf@rmer · 30 Jun 2007 at 12:25

My brand new Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R has onboard HD Audio 7.1, i thought this should sound pretty seXeh compared to my ageing Creative Audigy 2 soundcard.

How wrong i was, played a few mp3's, no complaints there. Fired up the crusty Return To Castle Wolfenstein (remember this is a 6 year old game) and played a few games online, the sound quality and amount of simultaneous effects is abysmal, Audigy 2 now installed.

If you love gaming go for a seperate sound card, as stated above, they do more work than onboard chips and sound quality is much, much better.

Personally I'd go for:

Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer 7.1 Soundcard - Retail - £58.74
or
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty - £89.29

p.s. could anyone confirm, if it's worth upgrading from an Audigy 2 to a Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty?

Nazbit · 30 Jun 2007 at 13:46

MofoKilla said:
yeah the system will perform better with a seperate sound card rather than onboard as it takes some of the load off the cpu.

While this is true, I dont think its as extreme as many people like to think. I have read that the work taken away from the cpu is only worth one or two FPS max.

However most sound cards will give you better quality than onboard, I could hear the difference when I moved from my onboard AC97 to an Xfi.