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#3376490 - 08/28/11 02:37 AM Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard?  
Joined: Jul 2005
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Force10 Offline
I'm just a
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In years past, a soundcard in my build was always a must. When I purchased my Alienware I didnt budget buying a sound card and I havent missed it....or have I?
The onboard sound sounds great to me, but I am not an audiofile and dont listen to music on my pc. Does having a soundcard these days make games run better by freeing up resources?

Just curious what the SimHQ folks are running.

Sound card vs. Onboard Sound
single choice
Votes accepted starting: 08/28/11 02:30 AM

Asus Z87 Sabertooth motherboard
Windows 7 64 bit Home edition
Intel I5 4670K @ 4.4 ghz
16 gig 1866mhz Corsair Vengence Pro memory
EVGA GTX 970 Superclocked 4gb Video Card
Intel 510 series 120gb SSD (boot drive)
Samsung 840 1TB SSD
Onboard Realtek sound
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#3376497 - 08/28/11 02:50 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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adlabs6 Offline
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Onboard sound for me. Back in the day, I used a SoundBlaster PCI 512 that I moved between a couple of builds. But at some point I tried the onboard and it worked perfectly well. My latest build has onboard too from the beginning.

I have had zero compatibility issues, and if the audio is somehow degraded over the SoundBlaster, I can't hear it from my chair.


WARNING: This post contains opinions produced in a facility which also occasionally processes fact products.
#3376504 - 08/28/11 03:04 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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saghen Offline
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I had a Soundblaster card before my Vista build (2008). At the time, there wasn't a sound driver available for Vista 64 so I went with onboard sound. Last fall I got Bad Company 2 and got repeated crashes. Read some forums and found that onboard sound was likely the issue. Creative finally did a Vista 64 driver and I tried it out. Bad Company 2 now works trouble free. I guess I'm stuck using a sound card with this setup, since I still want to play Bad Company 2.

#3376507 - 08/28/11 03:08 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Sauron Offline
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Quantum Superstate
Soundblaster X-Fi Xtreme. I have AMD High Definition onboard sound too, but it's disabled in favor of the Soundblaster.

Cheers!

Rick... cowboy


"We are extending ourselves in Space and Time not because of capitalism or socialism but in spite of them. The Right/Left Capitalist/Socialist establishments are psychologically unprepared for our emerging situation in Time and Space." - F. M. Esfandiary, Upwingers
#3376508 - 08/28/11 03:12 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Corsair8X Offline
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Onboard sound because I use a USB headset anyways.


Corsair8X

virtually making history 30mm at a time
#3376512 - 08/28/11 03:16 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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PanzerMeyer Online centaurian
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I still use a Soundblaster X-Fi soundcard.


“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
#3376517 - 08/28/11 03:19 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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KublaKhan Offline
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My previous system had on-board sound. This system has a SB X-Fi, I personally, can not tell the difference in the sound quality between the two systems. The addition of a sound card *does* allow me to use four speakers where the on-board didn't. The sound card is capable of 5.1 surround I just don't have the equipment plus all the other effects (EAX) that Creative became famous for, which are pretty useless to me.

While a dedicated sound card would probably unburden the CPU a little, you're probably not going to notice the difference. smile


"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Sun-Tzu
#3376535 - 08/28/11 03:51 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Timothy Offline
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I'd like an Asus SC, but it seems that the "redistributionists" on forum haven't been redistributing their wealth much lately. biggrin


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#3376537 - 08/28/11 04:00 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Navigator Offline
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I use a Soundblaster X-Fi gamer.


Never rub another man's rhubarb.
#3376556 - 08/28/11 04:33 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Speedo Offline
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I still have an X-Fi. Not much point in a dedicated sounds card these days tho.

#3376598 - 08/28/11 06:06 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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LukeFF Offline
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Asus Xonar DX card here.

#3376703 - 08/28/11 10:26 AM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Gopher Offline
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Both of my computers have sound cards - an Emu 1212M at home, and an oooold Terratec DMX 6/fire here. Less to do with sound quality (which is, for the most part, uniform, until you count RFI) and more to do with dsp and low latencies.
After Creative cleaned up, sound card and sound technology has been a bit stagnant, so you're probably not missing or gaining much by having one, except the convenience of a break-out box.

#3376724 - 08/28/11 12:25 PM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Jeevz Offline
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I use onboard sound for gaming. I have an external usb soundcard for using Reason or other audio software. I also have a usb headset.


Commence to Jigglin'
#3376750 - 08/28/11 01:36 PM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Cworth Offline
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Soundblaster X-Fi soundcard here


People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do.
#3376776 - 08/28/11 02:22 PM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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letterboy1 Offline
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X-Fi Fatl1ty


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#3376777 - 08/28/11 02:25 PM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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kludger Offline
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Onboard X-Fi works great for me no problems, no reason to use up a slot for a dedicated sound card IMHO.


i7-7700k@4.5ghz, GTX1080Ti,BenQ XL2420G-g-sync,Oculus Rift
#3376780 - 08/28/11 02:33 PM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: kludger]  
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Stuffy7634 Offline
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Originally Posted By: kludger
Onboard X-Fi works great for me no problems, no reason to use up a slot for a dedicated sound card IMHO.


Sure, if you have onboard X-Fi - if you have some crappy onboard sound device, a dedicated sound card is well worth the money.

Quote:
The onboard sound sounds great to me, but I am not an audiofile and dont listen to music on my pc. Does having a soundcard these days make games run better by freeing up resources?


I'm pretty sure I noticed a difference in gaming. smile

Last edited by Stuffy7634; 08/28/11 02:34 PM.

Mobo: GA-P35-S3
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 2.66Ghz
GPU: ATI EAH4850 512mb DDR3
RAM: 4.Gb 240pin DDR2 PC667Mhz PC5300
Sound: Audigy 4
O/S: Windows 7 64bit Home Premium
#3376895 - 08/28/11 07:13 PM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Raw Kryptonite Offline
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Like my sig says, Creative SB X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro / Logitech Z-5500
Love my SB. If you have a good set of speakers, there's no comparison to onboard sound, it's simply at a different level. If you don't like having control to optimize sound, then I would understand.
If you use basic speakers, then probably not worth it, but for good sound, like graphics, you've got to do it right.


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#3376908 - 08/28/11 07:39 PM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Raw Kryptonite]  
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adlabs6 Offline
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Originally Posted By: Raw Kryptonite
Like my sig says, Creative SB X-Fi Fatal1ty Pro / Logitech Z-5500
Love my SB. If you have a good set of speakers, there's no comparison to onboard sound, it's simply at a different level. If you don't like having control to optimize sound, then I would understand.
If you use basic speakers, then probably not worth it, but for good sound, like graphics, you've got to do it right.


I must admit I've never used the surround or advanced features of my older SoundBlaster, or my current 7 channel onboard audio. I game through headphones almost exclusively, just regular 2 channel headphones. Usually Sennheiser HD465, but also Grado Labs SR80, Koss PRO 4AA, and Audio Technica AD700 on occasion. I usually use my "better" headphones for occasional DVD or music listening more than gaming, driven by my Headroom headphone amp out of the onboard sound card line out.

Judging the audio quality through say, the Audio Technica AD700/Headroom, fed from either my onboard sound or my dedicated audio components is to my ears very close. I think the worst problem from the PC audio is RFI noise which while incredibly faint (high frequency ringing like line noise), is still there. I'm not sure an expensive sound card would fix this, since 12 miles of tangled power and signal cables behind my PC case would still be there. biggrin

My PC speakers are a pair of old Bose bookshelf speakers, used almost exclusively to provide general music for the room, or if I play a video if someone is visiting.

About as advanced as I ever got with my old SoundBlaster was occasional EAX support, with a bit of the hardware effects. But I had lots of trouble getting this to work smoothly back in those days. I think just one or two games every really "rocked" with these features as I recall. For many games, they just had to run in vanilla modes, or even software sound output back then on my PC. This was a large part of why I never seriously considered spending more on sound hardware.


WARNING: This post contains opinions produced in a facility which also occasionally processes fact products.
#3376942 - 08/28/11 08:49 PM Re: Poll: Onboard sound or Soundcard? [Re: Force10]  
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Bib4Tuna Offline
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About 5 years or so ago, when I was first installing Flaming Cliffs, I had a bad stuttering issue I could not diagnose. I must have spent entire nights going after what was causing it, since all other games seemed to be performing top notch.

At the time I had an X-fi Gamer card. I was so desperate, I decided to yank out the card and see if there was any difference. There was. The stuttering was gone. I really did not notice any loss of performance or quality with on-board sound with FC or any other game. I sold the X-fi, and since then... it's all on board sound for me baby!

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