Onboard versus Sound Card

Countcussy

Countcussy

Countcussy

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Sorry if this has been asked before, but is onboard sound still way behind even the mid range sound cards?

The audio on my old P4PE was awful, and even a non audio expert like myself could not believe the difference when I threw in a SB Live card. Has anything changed much?

My Asus P5K-e has the Soundmax on board audio. As it was a new build, I accepted this for starters, as I knew onboard had improved somewhat. Having built a decent rig, I am now starting to game more and I`m thinking that a dedicated sound card could be the icing on the cake.

I am very tempted by the PCI-e Soundblaster X-FI on this week only. If anything it seems too cheap to be a decent upgrade from my onboard. Am I wrong?
I know my Creative 2.1 speakers are not the greatest (I-Trigue), but they are(were) not cheapo either, and they certainly sounded good connected to my old SB. I can`t help thinking there is something "missing" from my sound. If that makes any sense.

Any thoughts would be appreciated :)

XPsp2 BTW.
 
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Countcussy said:
Sorry if this has been asked before, but is onboard sound still way behind even the mid range sound cards?
I am very tempted by the PCI-e Soundblaster X-FI on this week only. If anything it seems too cheap to be a decent upgrade from my onboard. Am I wrong?
Click to expand...
The current PCI-E part is not a proper X-Fi..old generation audigy 2 apparently

Im considering the same questions at the moment. From the threads and reviews ive concluded the following

1. the forums are so gushing for creative its a bit fishy imo.
2. very few people on this forum report that a discrete soundcard is not a significant upgrade..but there are 1 or two.
3. X-ram on some of the more expensive X-Fis is utilised in some games to improve performance / quality but perhaps not enough to warrant cost.
4. break out boxes on the more expensive X-Fis could be useful if you need the interfaces.
5. cpu utilisation is slightly lower with X-Fi than on board, but with modern cpus this seems almost an insiginificant point.

Imo...with X-Fi your paying £50 more for the last 1% improvement.

as per frank and walters, "the rich buy dearest cos they want to be sure, the poor cant afford to be that insecure!"

so come on then..who thinks that X-FI offers a qualitveley better experience, worth its asking price compared to modern onboard sound...are there any more disenters not swallowing the party line.
 
I know I've noticed a MAJOR change when I switched from Soundmax HD audio ( p5b delxue onboard rubbish) to an Audigy SE and that's on cheap 22 W total RMS 5.1 so yes onboard sound is still WAY behind even the oldest creative deticated sound imo.
 
On the other hand i removed an X-Fi last month and went to onboard audio on my mobo, and i have to say its not really any worse, sounds great in games, mp3s etc
 
it depends on the motherboard.

I went back to Onboard sound on my P5B Deluxe after having a XFI....and I have noticed that things in very good quality (DVDs, high quality mp3...etc) sound good...but other things in low quality sound TERRIBLE...where they used to sound decent on the XFI.

and of course gaming doesn't sound at all like it used to with openal
 
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I replaced my onboard Soundmax HD audio with an X-Fi and the sound quality was a great improvement but that was only running through analogy. Using optical I didn’t notice any difference. I wouldn’t have bothered getting a new sound card if I didn’t have to replace my Gigabyte motherboard as the Realtek onboard audio it uses was awesome.
 
Mmmm...

Reading between the lines, it seems for the mid end user, modern on board sound is good enough.

So, if i start to game a lot, which i have, would the extra effects a sound card can provide be worth it? EAX etc..
 
no tbh with a 2.1 itrigue setup there is no real point in upgrading from onboard sound (which HAS come along way).

look at it this way, its like comparing on board graphics to a system with a dedicated graphics card. It will be adequate to good for some sound applications but it will be lacking when you really want top notch sound.

mp3's and game audio files are not recorded in particularly high quality formats which you are probably aware (mp3's music in particular).

with regards to mp3 music there is no reason at all to buy a sound card. dedicated sound cards, especially the top end ones will actually make your MP3 collection sound terrible due to the fact that mp3's have so much of the original sound frequencies cut out.

Also unless you view a lot of films on your PC and have a 5.1 and above speaker setup to take advantage of the advanced sound formats EAX etc then again there is no real need in spending the extra cash.

basically you need to weigh up the costs against your needs, but in my opinion unless you listen to music in flac format, watch a lot of DVDs and like to squeeze as much processing power out of your system while gaming, dont bother with a sound card
 
I disagree, the P5B deluxe onboard sound is probably the worst I've had ever, the Realtek HD audio from my old P5LD2 and the Soundmax audio from my old P4C800 Deluxe were a lot better. The p5b dlx onboard rubbish had overexgaggerated with my subwoofer & bass causing cracking&rattling and sent sounds to the sub that should be directed @ the sat's instead ( it sent much too high freqs to the sub). It had no programmable channels, It had few 5.1 mixing options, and the Dobly rubbish was very bad. It didn't even properly do 5.1 in games, games that were true 5.1 were just converted to 5.1 discrete by soundmax :(, meaning I could hear no difference from back or front.

Now with my Audigy SE I can finally listen to music okay now with normall tones and normall bass. a lot of less background noise too and no cracking at all even @ full volume even while full volume is a lot louder now as it used to be.

Imo these day's soundmax hd audio is pure rubbish, I'd even prefer a cheap sweex c-media 5 € card above it just because since soundmax went ''hd'' they messed up sound quality bigtime.

Realtek HD is quite good imo, just shame it only supports upto eax 2 for in games, but still works fine in 5.1, unlike soundmax wich supposably also had eax 2 but never applied it and games like SA (eax) just detected my setup as 2.0 instead of 5.1:(.
 
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I noticed a small difference in sound quality when going from onboard on my a8n32-delux to an Auzentech X-Plosion. But the main difference I found was that it eliminated any static with my speakers. when I had them high, irrelevant of whether the windows sound was on/off there was lots of static, but with a sound card its much better!
 
The difference from on board to my M-audio 5.1 was phenomenal. I could hear things that before i wasn't able to pick up and it generally sounded a lot better. Both my Megaworks 550 and my headphones were sounding better. If you appreciate good sound if that is listening to your favourite music or watching a DVD or playing a game i would say paying a small amount of cash for a dedicated solution is the way to go.
Had to use my on-board sound card solution until M-audio got their drivers out for my soundcard and i couldn't stand the sound of my on-board solution : /
 
Really depends on:

a) Your motherboard
b) How good your speakers are
c) If your using optical to an external amp

I have nForce4 audio with a pair of AE Aego M's. When i put in a Prelude the difference was THRILLING. Huge change, especially in games.

I dont know how good the current onboard stuff is, but if your outputting to an amp then OB in enough.
 
I have a P5B too, and my X-Fi Xtreme Music is significantly better, especially in Battlefield 2142.

I have tried to game without my x-fi, but there are things that can't be heard without it - it definitely offers a competitive advantage over lesser quality audio.

That said, I wouldn't spend more than £50/£60 on one.
 
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