what would you use - onboard Audio or audio PCI card?

hey there

I have a choice of using my onboard realtek AC97 audio, or i have a Philips PSC 605 Sonic edge 5.1 32bit PCI audio card (which also has a gameport on it)

which woulkd you use? I heard that onboard audio is a bit poor - but i was wondering if the PCI card is any better?

How can i stop the devices conflicting if i do end up using the PCI card? Do i just uninstall Ac97 audio from the PC and then disable in the BIOS? Then install the PCI card afterwards?

any suggestions?

regards Jp

 

I use onboard for gaming.... I dont really notice the difference anyways.......

 

I prefer my Creative SB Audigy OEM PCI card over my onboard realtek 7.1 audio, although I am currently using both. I could be wrong, but I don't think realtek chips support EAX, so I use the audigy for gaming.

I use my Audigy with my 4.1 computer speakers and I use the digital audo output of the onboard realtek chip to send stereo music signal from Winamp to my home theater receiver in another room. That way I can listen to mp3's in the other room during gaming or general computer use.

 

On-board is usually fine. A friend of mine has the Audigy 2 LS - and I have the onboard from my mobo (Abit AN7 nForce2) - which supports 5.1. I have never noticed the difference and the only reason I would want to upgrade is to get 5.1 - so there seems no point for me.

It depends. If you are going to invest in some 5.1 speakers (brilliant for multiplayer games - gives you a nice edge) and your on-board doesnt support it then obviously upgrade to a PCI card that does.

About conflicts with your onboard and the card I dont know the details but in the past I have just installed all the drivers e.t.c for the card and never had any conflict - however, this maybe luck rather than the way it is...

 

i tried, and it conflicted lol

Spent last night trying to clean the botched installatiion up. geeeees

back to normal now

 

I guess mine was luck then!

Whats your mobo specs? I dont mind having a nosey around to see if I can find anything to help.

 

Being a fan of flight sims myself, the only reason I can see, is if your onboard doesn't have a Gameport. If it does, I don't really see any disadvantage. And if it conflicts, just disable the onboard.

 

The theory is that onboard audio uses precious CPU cycles and resources, so you are usually better off with a dedicated sound card, as that has it's own electronics to do the work, and doesn't rely on the motherboard or CPU.

 

That is true.

But is it worth the extra £ or $? The small amount of stress taken off of the mobo and processor wont do that much to the rest of the system (hardcore OC'ing exempt) - unless, of course, your doing some form of music production - but then you would have a card anyway!!

Kiwi (soon to change...)

 

I have a soundblaster live soft modded to a audigy 2 ZS and i used to think onboard sounded ok till i got this ..... I went from ~20%CPU usage to around 5% and the EAX in games is amazing....and it might be in my head but i think my games are faster now ...

 

Dedicated sound cards are almost always better.

Having said that, the quality of onboard sound these days is very good.

 

As mentioned the quality of onboard sound is pretty good these days and I use my onboard sound to play games and listen to music in general with no complaints (except that there is a click when I turn on the computer and the volume is turned up!). I also have an m-audio soundcard hooked up to studio monitors that I use for music production, so it really depends on your need. You can always save that money you thought of spending on a soundcard and buy a better speaker system...

 

Onboard or installed sound card. Hmmm. It all depends what I'm wanting to do. Play games? I'd probably just use the built in sound. Record high qualtiy music (NO not burning mp3's) via a music studio, I'd use M-Audio or some other Highend sound card: http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta1010-main.html

or

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta66-main.html

 

i did- it made no difference

 

Its been my experience that standalone cards are better simply because of driver support.

Motherboard companies are slow to release drivers, and half the time, you can't find reference drivers.

I've had many an issue where onboard audio drivers also caused instability due to them not being very well written.

 

Really? I've never had problem with onboard sound driver support. I could see some minor isseus if you ran a 64bit OS right now, but otherwise the motherboards themselves also come with the drivers needed to make the onboard sound work. It's been well over 5 years since I haven't seen the audio driver come with the motherboard when it's onboard sound.

I have had many issues with windows update, updating onboard sound drivers to a "better" version then what is on the motherboard CD, and that has broken it many times. But I just solve that by never trusting windows update for driver support, everytime I have it bites me in the ass.

 

Games generally require regular driver updates. yes onboard will work fine with drivers from the motherboard CD, but its only a matter of time till I game complains about them. A perfect example is my wife's HP, where sound randomly stops working in games, until she reboots.

As for getting drivers from Windows Update, yeah, thats playing Russian Roullette, IMO.

 

I'm suprised, I'm running an oboard sound driver from 2003 on this comp and I've never had a problem. Maybe just some are bad. I almost always use ASUS boards when building now and honestly once I've had sound working, I've never had it die in any game.

In fact the only time I've had trouble with a working soundcard and games would date back to DOS games. Where you had to setup the sound card for each individual game. Now sometimes that was a problem.

 

Thers a forum at majorgeeks.com,ask for a guy called adrynalyn he should be able to help

 

I dunno, last I heard, he sold out, and is using a Mac. Who would want help from him?

What a loser.

 

lmao

 

lol, Adrynalyne, we seem to agree more and more every day.

 

Ow!

Low blow!