On board sound or Sound Card?

[Tsakali]

my question is not about sound quality, as I understand some new boards have pretty good on board sound these days.

My question is about memory and cpu usage. I am under the impression that on board sound takes up cpu and memory usage from your system, where stand alone to some extend does its own processing and uses its own ram... so in that respect should I always expect to have a better running system if I was to choose a stand alone sound card, or is the requirements of an onboard so neglect-able that it should make no difference?

[^misantropia^]

Memory usage? Negligible.

Hardware vs software mixing? Only the high-end sound cards do it in hardware and even then it'll save you only 1 or 2% CPU.

tl;dr - Just use the on-board sound.

[Foo]

The answer is not clear-cut. Some onboard chips depend on other system resources and offload processing to the CPU. Others to not.

If you care enough to worry about pushing CPU and memory to the maximum, you're obsessive enough to warrant getting a discrete sound card.

Just don't buy a creative or I will poo on you IRL.

[+JuggerNaut+]

never had problems with any of my creative cards. just sayin.

[Tsakali]

yet foo is not the first to one to dog creative out this idea seems to be wide spread right now...so what's a good sound card manufacturer these days?

[+JuggerNaut+]

the hardware is mostly fine, the customer service is shit.

turtle beach
m-audio

[obsidian]

And drivers are shit. Trying to update drivers when driver version numbers are not sequential is like wandering though a maze of dripping wet shit.

Plus, false advertising of their Audigy cards (class action lawsuit) and what they tried to pull on id Software by holding a technology patent as hostage when Doom3 was a week from release, they deserve to be boycotted.

Prior to using just onboard audio, I was using an M-audio card. Nice card, great sound. Truth is, sound card technology hasn't really progressed in the last 10+ years and there's little reason to spend money on something when onboard will do the same job (unless you're doing some serious audio engineering).

[+JuggerNaut+]

drivers go poopie?

[Tsakali]

I have a basic audigy from a year or so back... so I figured I'd use it instead of the one that came on board my gigabyte ( mobo: GA-MA785GMT-UD2H --sound chipset: Realtek ALC889A )...By using an older sound card instead of a newer on board sound chip is still a better idea no matter how you look at it...yes no?

[Fender]

not necessarily

[^misantropia^]

Truth is, sound card technology hasn't really progressed in the last 10+ years and there's little reason to spend money on something when onboard will do the same job (unless you're doing some serious audio engineering).

This. That is all there is to it. This should be the last post in this thread.

[+JuggerNaut+]

I have a basic audigy from a year or so back... so I figured I'd use it instead of the one that came on board my gigabyte ( mobo: GA-MA785GMT-UD2H --sound chipset: Realtek ALC889A )...By using an older sound card instead of a newer on board sound chip is still a better idea no matter how you look at it...yes no?

i'd go with a newer onboard rather than a card.

oh, mis, this will be the last post.

[Deathshroud]

I would say go with m-audio, but their driver support is crap for their older cards.

[Peenyuh]

I have my comp goin through an external amp and EQ. On board don't make no nevermind. Just as long as it puts out somthing, I can fix it with my stereo. Just tried to put in this (nameless) audio card yesterday... screwed up my comps ability to even PLAY audio... drivers... hardware... not right combo... shite... Just went back to what works with no glitches. Onboard w/external tuning.

I dunno...

[+JuggerNaut+]

On board don't make no nevermind. Just as long as it puts out somthing, I can fix it with my stereo.

[Fender]

last post

[Grenader]

Bollocks to be quite honest. Had nothing but excellant customer service from Creative, my XFI pro's been a great card. The card goes great with the S750 speakers i have here, and the crystalizer is awesome for bringing low quality audio to life. Your CPU saving in games is _far_ more than 1-2% with alot of AL buffers flying around as DSP mixing on the processor can be _very_ hoggy, especially when you start throwing in extensions such as EAX/EFX.




On the other hand, there's no denying the drivers themselves are buggy as crap

[^misantropia^]

Yeah, but the point is that most cards don't do much in hardware. OpenAL for example is not accelerated in the Audigy SE and LS series (and probably others).

Lastest post.