SB Live or on board sound

[Dave65]

I heard somewere that the less you have in your PCI slots the more you can get out of your system.
Wee I have an MSI board with on board sound,I dont know how good it is,but would it be worth just using the on board sound over the SB Live?
If there would be any gain in losing the sound card I think I would do it,but im am not sure..I need HEP

 

[JasonW]

I don't like on-board sound because it uses the microprocessor to do its thing and that sucks for gaming. So does the SB Live but not as bad as on-board. I switched to Hercules Game Theater because of this reason and I saw a nice jump in FPS in many games.

Not sure about the less PCI cards the more you can get out of your system, never heard that before. Although that doesn't mean its not true.

 

[xl]

On board sound doesn't use a perceptable amount of cycles. I used it before I got my hercules Muse XL. Now dpending on your speakers, you won't notice much difference. The only reason I get the Muse XL is for the rear speaker support.

 

[skip]

Depends on the sound chip on board. Some are hardware based and use no CPU cycles. AC97 does but most of the CMedia don't.

 

[Wa11y]

Depends on the sound chip on board. Some are hardware based and use no CPU cycles. AC97 does but most of the CMedia don't.

AC97 does what, and CMedia don't what? Kinda unclear on that.

I've seen some mobos with on-board creative sound (sounblasters). I personally won't use on-board sound, since I do game quite a bit. Saves on CPU cycles, and gives better quality.

And it would make sense that less PCI cards would mean less things to get screwed up by running at a higher FSB, and some PCI cards don't handle high FSBs as well as others, and from what I've read, Creative soundcards are notorious for holding back an OC. I've got my FSB at 146 from 133 with a Creative Audigy, and have no problems at all.

Basically, if you game, get a soundcard. If not, just use on-board sound.

 

[Bubba]

I think what happens when you use all or alot of the pci slots you have a better probability of having IRQ conflict problems.Don't hold me too this it's just my experience and I'm no expert.If you know how to manually set up that stuff I guess it wouldn't be much of a problem anyway.