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| Thread ID: 50321 | 2004-10-17 05:22:00 | Onboard vs Soundcard | Nighthawk (5846) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 281955 | 2004-10-17 05:22:00 | Are soundcards worth buying? apparently they take some strain off the cpu by processing audio itself, giving your cpu a performance boost. is it worth it? getting a sound card (even a cheap $20 one) i have SoundMAX digi audio onboard but i wanna know if getting a sound card might give my athlon xp 2500 a boost (in games) thanks, james |
Nighthawk (5846) | ||
| 281956 | 2004-10-17 05:33:00 | Quite a few onboard soundcards are soundmax now (like these 2 PC's here). I wouldnt bother with another soundcard unless u plan on getting into something like music. Where a soundcard with digital in/out would help. Or you have something like a minidisk or something with digital input. And you have a 5:1 speaker system, so you can actually hear something decent. I find the onboard sound more than enough. BUT yup I would agree onboard sound does put a strain on the CPU ( I spose it depends what CPU you have as well). |
Spacemannz (808) | ||
| 281957 | 2004-10-17 06:31:00 | a cheap $20 soundcard will not help the situation as those sort of cards still rely on the cpu to do most of the work and are just like integrated sound, only non integrated...... anyways, to really free up your valuable cpu time youll be wanting something like and audigy 2 or audigy 2 zs, these are like the gaming soundcards and can be picked up for around ~$120 for the a2 and ~160 for the a2zs |
lagbort (5041) | ||
| 281958 | 2004-10-19 18:50:00 | woo thanks that helps alot! i think ill stick with onboard for now... hehe i dont use this pc for music, just for gaming now, i moved my speakers (that didn't work on the computer - crackled out and sucked) and connected the to my mp3 CD player in my room and damn! they work perfectly... so mayb i blame my onboard sound for crap speaker output... |
Nighthawk (5846) | ||
| 281959 | 2004-10-19 19:43:00 | If youve got an nForce2 motherboard with the MCP-T then i'd be inclined to stick with the onboard sounds. The MCP-T has the legendary Soundstorm, which will be far superior to any cheap soundcard and in many cases better than even a Soundblaster live. One of the big benefits of Soundstorm is its ability to ouput 5.1 digitally via the SPDIF ports. All other motherboards regardless of whether they have 5.1/7.1 can only output stereo through the SPDIF ports. This means you can bypass the crappy DAC's on most motherboards and use a quality AMP to decode the signal. Buying a seperate soundcard like the Soundblaster Audigy also gives you support of EAX, which can make you games sound more reaslistic etc. Soundcards do have benefits over onboard unless youve got soundstorm. But in saying that Soundstorm can be finicky and troublesome but in most cases these problems can be overcome. Soundcards often produce better sound quality and can also be carried over to a new build. Alot of soundcards offer support for hardware sound API's such as EAX. The majority of soundcard still require some CPU cycles and thus still do affect performance, the only card that offers better performance is the Audigy2. Ive got a Soundblaster Audigy and Soundstorm, when i compared the two side by side i could only notice a difference in sound quality when the volume was really loud. Soundstorm start to degrade a lil bit and sounded more crackly, but I think this would be caused more by the cheap DAC rather than soundstorm itself. (I was testing with a high quality OGG file) |
Pete O'Neil (250) | ||
| 281960 | 2004-10-19 20:04:00 | > Ive got a Soundblaster Audigy and Soundstorm, when i > compared the two side by side i could only notice a > difference in sound quality when the volume was > really loud. Soundstorm start to degrade a lil bit > and sounded more crackly, but I think this would be > caused more by the cheap DAC rather than soundstorm > itself. (I was testing with a high quality OGG file) Hi Pete I've been looking at sound options for an upcoming comp build in the New Year (considering Audigy) and I'd like to clarify one of your comments quoted above. When you said the volume was really loud, are you referring to the setting of the volume control or the dynamic range of the source material? As I read your post you are saying the cheap DAC introduced distortion on sounds at the top end of the dynamic range. If my understanding is correct, then this effect would occur at any setting of the volume control on the power amp. That view is predicated on the volume control operating on the analogue signal post-DAC of course. Can you clear that up for me please? Cheers Billy 8-{) |
Billy T (70) | ||
| 281961 | 2004-10-19 20:08:00 | Shame that Soundstorm has effectively been finished as a product, Absent from the nforce3 and from the upcoming Nforce4, Slim hope that it will ever be produced as a stand alone card either. Damn shame. |
metla (154) | ||
| 281962 | 2004-10-19 20:26:00 | Not 100% sure what your asking Billy but i'll try to provide a lil more info on my testing methods. They werent very scientifc and im not a sound guru so my testing may have been flawed. I used my Sony Stereo nothing special, set the stereo so there was no trebble or bass, and turn off the sub woofers. I set the volume on the stereo at about a 1/4 of the total possible. At this point a CD sounded crisp and clear (as good as you can get from a CD). I was using a cheap DSE cable with a 3.5mm headphone jack on one end and 2 RCA plugs on the other. I used winamp and an OGG file, a selected a favourite rock track (metallica or GNR cant remember) and slowly increased the volume. Yes it very sad to see no more soundstorm, made me laugh though every AMD fanboy under the sun were saying that nForce4 would have it and it doesnt. Muhahaha oh well it was nice while lasted. |
Pete O'Neil (250) | ||
| 281963 | 2004-10-20 02:04:00 | If you want to do "scientific" testing, try the Rightmark Audio Analyser (http://audio.rightmark.org/). It's free. I think it's at version 5.4 now. | Graham L (2) | ||
| 281964 | 2004-10-20 04:11:00 | I have onboard sound, realtek, with SPDIF IN/OUT and EAX etc.. the only complaint is the high ambiant noise from all the bus activity. As far as I can tell it is a hardware sound system and does not need any CPU help. All said and done the plug-in sound card can have more "leg room: to use better de-coupling and better filtering, but it is still the same as the on-board. |
ugh1 (4204) | ||
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