Sound card Vs. onboard audio

[llmercll]

Is there a noticeable difference between onboard audio and a sound card?

Does having a sound card increase performance in games?

thanks!

 

[PolygonGTC]

That depends. If you have good speakers to take advantage of a better card then you WILL hear a difference between onboard and a good stand alone card. If your have crap speakers or you are just doing digital passthrough to a receiver then the onboard is just fine.

 

[skyline889]

Having a dedicated sound card will not yield any realizable performance benefit for gaming. As for the difference between onboard and dedicated audio, if you're just using the digital out, there will be little difference if any in sound quality. For personal reasons, I still prefer dedicated over onboard regardless, but many don't.

If you're using the analog outputs however, there will be a difference in sound quality. As far as onboard audio has come over the years, imo it still doesn't even come close to competing with the dedicated solutions currently on the market. Only you can decide if the difference will be worth it and notable though, so just listen to what you have now. If you like it, keep it. If you don't, there are a host of options available.

 

[criccio]

A good soundcard coupled with good speakers (no, Z5500's aren't good speakers) will most definitely improve sound. Performance increases where only something we saw years and years ago. With have 3+GHz Quad Core CPU's now. They can do sound processing at idle.

 

[llmercll]

Ahh that's good to hear, the performance part anyway. I've got an old sound blaster audigy in my new system and wasn't sure if it was necessary. It seems to have some driver issues with win7 x64, and from what you guys told me, It'd be better used in my older athlon xp 2600+ HTPC.

I've got really, really crappy speakers, and most of the time just use equally crappy headphones, so enthusiast quality is definitely not a concern. But say I did get Z-5500's, would the sound card make a difference then? I'll probably never spend more than $50-$100 on a set of speakers though.

 

[criccio]

Z5500's are not quality speakers. They are loud but do not produce quality, accurate sound by any means.

 

[llmercll]

So you're referring more to studio monitor type equipment? some really $$$$ stuff

If not, what do you consider good speakers, just out of curiosity? I didn't know they got much better than the high end logitechs lol

Either way, I'll probably never get anything nicer than a 2.1 set from logitech, so with those, I take it onboard would do just fine?

 

[criccio]

There are plenty of affordable studio monitors... There is nothing high end about logitechs. There is tons of info in this sub-forum regarding this. The only thing they do well is market themselves.

I'm on my phone or I would give you a ton of better options.
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