Onboard vs PCI

Shydave · 19 Apr 2006 at 13:49

Would there be any noticeable performance gain if any between using the onboard sound to slotting in a seperate sound card?

Cheers peeps

Octavarium · 19 Apr 2006 at 13:53

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

JimJones · 19 Apr 2006 at 14:23

I found a boost of 2-3 fps in most games with a dedicated sound card.

Jim

LoadsaMoney · 19 Apr 2006 at 14:46

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.

barney · 19 Apr 2006 at 14:48

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.

Dutch Guy · 19 Apr 2006 at 14:56

It depends on the game, for CPU limited games there will be a difference as there is a lower CPU utilization with a PCI soundcard like a Audigy2 or 4

Tarty · 19 Apr 2006 at 16:26

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

TooNice · 19 Apr 2006 at 17:11

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.

Aidoscuz · 20 Apr 2006 at 00:43

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.

MadMatty · 20 Apr 2006 at 09:22

EAX 3/4 in supported games is also something I couldnt do without now, the difference between 3/4 and eax2 as used on onboard is too big