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Onboard Sound vs CHAINTECH AV-710

H

Head_Hermie

n00b
Joined
Jul 12, 2005
Messages
19
I'm builting my computer today, and I'm wondering what sound card I should use. I have a Chaintech av-710 I can use, or should I stick with the onboard sound from my DFI Lanparty nF4 Ultra-D? Both are a temperary solution till I save enough funds for a nice card, but that might be a while (read 6 months to a year). I'm planning on upgrading speakers first to a logitech surround sound setup, but for now I mostly use my headphones or craptacular speakers fro the late 90's. Any thoughts are appreciated.
 
The AV-710 is a great little card, I'd definitely use it. Some find the presentation a little flat, but it's definitely pretty accurate.
 
It's so darn cheap...even a marginal gain is worth the money.

I bought one to fix some static issues I had developed on my K8V SE Deluxe. Definitely worth the money and I can tell the difference in music.
 
If you are using only stereo the high quality setting for av-710 (jumpered?) using the 7/8 outputs will sound better than any of the creative stuff (don't know about X-fi). But for multi-channel you'll need something different.

Also what "craptacular" speakers do you have? If they're multimedia they're probably crap but if they are real speakers they might be better than any multi media setups.
 
As a multichannel gaming card the AV-710 flat out sucks.
Save your money.
 
I already own the chaintech, bought it a while back for my ailing AXP system. The Chaintech will just be a solution till I free up enough funds for a nice gaming card. The speakers I have are old dell comp speakers that, I mainly use for a headphone jack. THanks for the help though, the chaintech will find itself in my new comp.
 
the local computer shop said that today's motherboards have better onboard sound than they make in sound cards except the Audigy4. I honestly don't believe the guy, that's why I still use my Audigy 2 ZS but I think the guy was thinking about features rather than quality.[

I guess it depends if you want quality or features. Or use one of them until you get something better like the Audigy 2 ZS or the Audigy 4 or whatever is around the corner...
 
CORVETTEZ06 said:
the local computer shop said that today's motherboards have better onboard sound than they make in sound cards except the Audigy4.
Click to expand...

Well that guy is an idiot.

In general, there are two kinds of soundcards. You have the cards that focus on gaming, and you have cards that focus on sound quality. Usually cards that excel in one of these categories, either completely fails or only does an average job at the other. In the case of onboard sound, in most cases it sounds like crap AND sucks for games. Most onboard audio is still based on the ancient AC97 codec. There are some motherboards that have an integrated sound blaster live, which an audigy would obviously blow away, and there are some boards that have some pretty good sounding audio (intel Hi-Def, etc) but still usually fall short of add-in cards in terms of SQ and almost always suck at games.

But most soundcards, even the ones that focus mainly on sound quality, still play games just fine. It’s mostly a matter of if you can live without EAX, and don’t mind a few extra percentage points of CPU usage. On the other hand, cards that have crap sound quality will always have crap sound quality and there isn’t much you can do about it.
 
glad i got that solved, thanks (i feel like i should go yell at the local computer shop now :))

GotNoRice said:
Well that guy is an idiot.

In general, there are two kinds of soundcards. You have the cards that focus on gaming, and you have cards that focus on sound quality. Usually cards that excel in one of these categories, either completely fails or only does an average job at the other. In the case of onboard sound, in most cases it sounds like crap AND sucks for games. Most onboard audio is still based on the ancient AC97 codec. There are some motherboards that have an integrated sound blaster live, which an audigy would obviously blow away, and there are some boards that have some pretty good sounding audio (intel Hi-Def, etc) but still usually fall short of add-in cards in terms of SQ and almost always suck at games.

But most soundcards, even the ones that focus mainly on sound quality, still play games just fine. It’s mostly a matter of if you can live without EAX, and don’t mind a few extra percentage points of CPU usage. On the other hand, cards that have crap sound quality will always have crap sound quality and there isn’t much you can do about it.
Click to expand...
 
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