On-board VS sound cards

A bit of a newbie question :

Are the realtek sound chips that come buit in to some MOBOs okay for gaming / audio or is it worth purchasing a seperate sound card?

onboard audio is fine for just about everyone. I got an audigy 2 platinum because I like all the extra connection options, and it does sound better, but sound-wise onboard audio will meet most people's standards.

Let's see. What kind of speakers are you using with it?

depends on the motherboard, before the one i am using now, everything was fine, but with this motherboard (Biostar M7NCD Ultra, motherboards from ECS, Asus, DFI, Epox, and another Biostar board I used had been fine) I had a lot of bleeding from the motherboard that caused hissing and buzzing at over medium volume on my speakers, a sound card fixed everything and the sound quality is very noticeably better but that depends on the sound card, props to chaintech and via for the economical yet quality build of the AV-710 and Envy24

if you arent an audiophile, you probably wont notice the difference. If you are big on movie, music, game sound, then best go with a creative audigy

Like someone said: What kind of speakers do you have? I believe THIS will be where you will find the difference...

I had a set of Logitech z5300's. They were fun and rumbly. They were powered by my PC-DL's onboard audio (Analog Devices). It was fine.

I upgraded to a set of Swans M200's. With these, the sound was very poor. I bought an HDA Mystique, and things were back to being good again (well, things were much better).

If you have crappy speakers, onboard will be fine. If you have decent speakers, and you are very picky, you might have a problem. If you have good speakers, go get a sound card. Even the Chaintech 710c (I think thats the name) will do you well.

Oh yeah.. no "fanboyisms" here.. I would have much rather had the Analog Devices chip sound super duper awesome.. I work there.. needless to say, my company couldn't pull through ;-] Although, during the winter I may be swapping the op-amps on my Mystique for the best of whatever I can find :-]

Chaintech AV-710, and yes, it would do you well!

That Chaintech Emon noted is a very nice budget soundcard. I try not to use onboard sound because it seems to be buggy and sometimes noisy. The only exception is the NF2 boards that had Soundstorm, which was first rate.

drunkn.bear said:

if you arent an audiophile, you probably wont notice the difference. If you are big on movie, music, game sound, then best go with a creative audigy

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Ok, maybe I'm twisting your words or misinterpreting, but are you saying that if you ARE an audiophile, to go with an Audigy? Are you serious? I can agree if you are a hardcore gamer. But it's hardly an ideal card for anyone big on high fidelity sound in music and movies(assuming you've got a good ear and great speakers).

rseven said:

That Chaintech Emon noted is a very nice budget soundcard. I try not to use onboard sound because it seems to be buggy and sometimes noisy. The only exception is the NF2 boards that had Soundstorm, which was first rate.

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Only the digital out... the analog was/is still bad.

Thanks for all your replies.

At the moment I am using a set of Altec Lansing speakers, (about 5 years old). They are getting a bit long in the tooth but they still sound pretty good.

I'll try out the onboard audio for a couple of weeks (mostly for gaming) and if it's no good I'll get a dedicated card.

I read somewhere that onboard chips use the CPU to process sound whereas dedicated sound cards don't. I'm not sure how accurate that statement was but that was my main concern.

Vard0 said:

Thanks for all your replies.

At the moment I am using a set of Altec Lansing speakers, (about 5 years old). They are getting a bit long in the tooth but they still sound pretty good.

I'll try out the onboard audio for a couple of weeks (mostly for gaming) and if it's no good I'll get a dedicated card.

I read somewhere that onboard chips use the CPU to process sound whereas dedicated sound cards don't. I'm not sure how accurate that statement was but that was my main concern.

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Yes on board sound generally does use more than a card but both use some.