Onboard vs PCI

Depends what for, if its just for games then I really don't see the fuss about a seperate sound card, onboard sounds good enough.

On the other hand...

For an avid DVD or music fan, a decent PCI sound card is the way to go
 
Yeah i think the difference is only about a couple of frames, nothing thats going to show though, as if your getting about 100fps i doubt your gona tell theres a couple less if you start using on-board sound, couple of frames is nothing. :)
 
Guess it depends how good the onboard sound on your motherboard is and how good your hearing is. I have gone down both routes in the past and for me i couldnt tell the difference between a decent onboard sound card or a mid range pci card. Personally i will stick with my onboard sound as with some decent speakers it is very good.

Edit: sorry if i misread and you meant system performance rather then sound quality. As above i dont think it will make a noticable difference.
 
Also depends on your speakers, if you've got a load of big wattage speakers, then you're definitely going to tell the difference if you've got a high spec sound card over onboard, using headphones or just a few small speakers, then there's no reason you should
 
What is meant by "performance" here? Sound quality? System performance?

For system performance, the improvement is usually negligeable. Faster/more RAM, an extra 30mhz overclock will generally have a larger effect.
 
I went from onboard sound to a Creative X-Fi which according to Creative should have given me a 15% increase in games. It didn't... The increase in sound quality was well worth it though, onboard sound is just so messy and tinny in comparison.
 
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