Hanabal

Hey, Im looking at buying a new computer, and I was wondering

With all the new onboard sound gimicks, is a sound card still required, does onboard support EAX etc?

I know an audigy would be good but can I put it off till i have a bit more money.

Thanks

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JStrider

most onboard sound doesnt support EAX... it just supports the basic maybe 4 channel sound... and a mic... its good enough for most people/uses... its definently a lot better then the old onboard solutions used to be...

if your tight on moneyits a good place to save some... you can use it till you have money for a better sound card...

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Speed_Gibson

onboard sound is fine for many/most average users.
I personally can have nothing less than a high quality breakout box on my desktop, refuse to touch anything from creative, and need and use both optical in/out connections for my stereo component system. Nothing but Hercules soundcards for me here on the main audio workstation.
My crash box has a cheap $30 old hercules muse card and my *nix box has adequate seldom used shitty onboard AC '97 sound.

Mr.Deflok

Onboard audio these days support up to 5.1 channels of sound, it might not be any Audigy (or a SBLive5.1 for that matter) but it's still damn good.

Hanabal

how much would it affect system performance,
I heard it can drain the main processors power

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Tickford

The only reason I think that you would buy the Audigy, is all the cool software that comes with it....

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catback

The audiophile will buy the best money can buy or the best they can afford at least. If your not an audiophile you'll probably be satisfied with onboard audio. If you are an audiophile you know what you want to do and are going to end up doing.

soopafreek

isn't it that if you want to be able to burn CDs or watch DVDs, the drives require a separate sound card? so if you plan on getting a CD-RW or DVD drive (if one's not already installed), make sure you check the requirements...

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Dragonlich

Well, given that I work at a computer shop, and my tech guy (who builds at least two computers a day) has not ever mentioned this, nor had any problems with it... I'd say you're wrong.

And yes, we do sell tons of computers with onboard sound *and* a CDRW *and* a DVD-ROM.

Tex

If you plan on playing games, then you definately need a sound card. Footsteps, weapons going off, and model expressions are just SO much better with a good sound card and nice set of speakers.

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Hanabal

Ive got the speakers, but they arent positioned very well,
(Both off to my left)

Its just that Ill have to settle for a worse computer if I need a Sound Card. And I want the best computer possible,

Gaming is a part of my life but surely I can go a little while without the sound card

Also, how do the hercules rate against say an audigy

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Dragonlich

How about going for a cheap-arse Soundblaster live 5.1? You should be able to get the OEM version for 40 dollars at most. They cost 39 Euros in my shop, and we're supposed to be relatively expensive (as a country, not as a shop).

It may not be as good as an Audigy II, but it's good anyway.

Speed_Gibson

Hercules has excellent and fast driver support in my experience. I have never encountered a single BSOD on windows 98/2000/XP using their drivers and what really impressed me:
I installed WinXP pro for the first time the week before it was released in stores. Was running - and still am using the same card - my hercules game theatre XP. Of course windows did not recognise it all (and no XP drivers were on the site yet), but a solid winXP driver was released less than a week after the official release date.
Some the creative cards do offer a wireless remote, but after reading horror stories online about drivers and just my admittedly biased negative opinion of creative, i avoid them like the plague.
This is the latest and greatest incarnation of my older card (have had mine somewhere around 2-3 years now). Once you get used to the external box on your desktop there is no going back (at least if you work with audio things every day from at least 3-4 different sources) My antec tower has a front door that closes and a front panel interface/ports is not an option for me and just seems bulky when compared to a desktop breakout box that constantly has wires plugged into it.

-stating obvious-
and yes I would fall under the "audiophile" category
-/stating obvious-

Dragonlich

Speed_Gibson... I have never in my entire computer history (some 10 years) had any problems whatsoever with Creative, their soundblaster cards, or their drivers.

Their soundcards may not please the audiophile, but they'll sure as hell please the remaining 99% of the world's population.

LNCPapa

You will definitely take a performance hit if you use onboard audio - but I guess it really comes down to what you plan to do with it. If it's gonna be a top notch machine with a great video card and you're only going to be playing old games on it then you can go for a while without one. However, I wouldn't try such a thing if you will be playing more modern games. Actually, being a bit of an audiophile, I wouldn't go without a decent soundcard at all.

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thebigk

You can always give it a go with onboard audio first and see how it sounds and see if it drags things down...adding a sound card after the fact is pretty easy.

JBX

Onboard vs PCI card.
If your a Gamer, onboard uses cpu cycles PCI has it's own processor. Could mead life or death in a death match.

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HeAtHeN

Gigabyte's new boards have 5.1 sound onboard... and it's not to bad.

I'd do what thebigk says... go with an onboard system... and if you hate it... but a soundcard.

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hello.jpg

onboard sound is good enough. I doubt you can really tell the difference.

Speed_Gibson

From what I have read and observed, they are a very popular brand all the way from the complete nOOb to the experienced audiophile - the creative cards that I do/have owned and used in the past have been stable for me, that is mainly my strong personal bias showing in that previous post. There are just better options available in my opinion, not going to berate anyone for using thier products though.

mrquackers

Hanabal,

You'll be fine without one for a while if you don't have a strong speaker set-up. If you've got the money invested in a good set of speakers already, though, it's worth ponying up the cash for.

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kofspades

yes, sound cards are a big necessity. Althought, I'm a music nut so I need good sound.

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sandeep

I have an ECS K7S5A motherboard with onboard sound, and it's just fine for me.

I'm running an XP 1900+ which runs at about 1.6ghz, with 512megs of ddr2100 ram, and i've never noticed any lack of performance during gaming (ut2k3 for example).

Infact, i had an old sblive Value card that i had to pull out because it didn't like my Radeon 9000 very much. I listen to music and play games with my system now without any problems. My motherboard has a line in for my CDRW drive, so I can play and rip cd's no problem now.

If it's a money thing, i'd reccommend holding off on the sound card.

although as many have said, it's easy enough to build the system first without a soundcard, and then disabling the onboard if/when you get an additional PCI soundcard.

Hanabal

thanks everyone for your advice.
and i think ill go without for a while and see how it goes,

thanks

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tinfoil

Some newer mobos are coming with the Via Envy HT chip. It's a great chip and sound cards based on this (ie: M-Audio Revolution 7.1) kick ass.

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d4in

you can get the onboard connector for things like spdif and such, but you have to order them when you order the board...most dont come standard

you can get good sound out of an onboard solution, but if you want high quality sound, or are a gaming freak, you want to have something that will at least do surround out of the box.

Herculese is good, i try and stay away from creative if possibe (they have crappy support)

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Raw Kuts

There are some really good onboard sound solutions. Some of the nforce2 boards have soundstorm, and it is has hardware acceleration (it shouldn't drain your cpu time very much) and 6 channel support, might not be a TB Santa Cruz...

It definately will get you going where you want to go if you don't want to go where there are places where those things are and they say don't go there because we don't want you to go there because when we went there there were we and we said to ourselves do we really want to be with we and where we were going before we went together?

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hobo

I use my onboard card and it sounds fine to me. I have decent speakers (4 small ones for surround) and a small subwoofer. MP3s sound good so I don't think I will need an expensive sound card.

sandeep

just to add, my ECS board has a C-Media audio chip that works quite well.

i believe it's capable of EAX as well, but i've never bothered to investigate.