nForce2 Sound Storm upgrade to Audigy ZS

[mossman]

Well the nForce2 Sound storm onboard sound on my Asus A7N8X sounds pretty good for onboard sound. But I want better.

I'm thinking about upgrading to the Audigy ZS.

I play games all the time and watch DVD's on my pc. Is it true that the cpu is used more if you have onboard sound? and if I get a card then the cpu will not have to work as hard? Or is the difference not noticable?

I also heard that games like Farcy might have glitchy sound because of onboard sound.

So my question is, Is this upgrade worth it?

oh yeah, my speakers are: Cambridge FPS1800 speakers.
It's a 4.1 setup, but I'm not sure if it is TRUE surround sound; its got the EAX picture on the box.

 

[jester1176]

first, EAX isn't surround sound. its a technology based on environmental effects....reverb, occlusion, obstruction etc. so your speakers will give you true 4.1 sound as long as the sound card supports 3d audio.

second, it is true that on-board audio take up cpu cycles. they require all the processing to be done on-host. now, the nforce 2 audio is better than most, but still, you can expect about a 5-10% performance loss when using direct sound with onboard audio.