Reply With QuoteNo. Discrete soundcards are no more necessary than discrete NICs these days.
I've been getting BSODs in various games, usually preceded by loud staticky PSSHHHHH! noises. I suspect that it's the sound card, which is one of the early model Soundblaster X-Fi cards (I forget if it's an Extreme Gamer or Audio or whatever). I'm going to try taking it out tonight and using my motherboard's onboard sound, and I realized that I don't really know what the Soundblaster is for. I never turn on EAX, I don't really care about whatever fancy positional audio tricks it's doing, and I only use stereo headphones or two speakers. Do I even need a dedicated soundcard?
Last edited by OrfBC; 02-27-2009 at 03:48 PM.
No. Discrete soundcards are no more necessary than discrete NICs these days.
I can think of a few cases where a soundcard is still useful, like an HTPC where you want to route sound to different places (TV/home theatre, or regular computer speakers), or if you want EAX support in older games under Vista (needs a Creative card specifically, I think).
But otherwise, no. I keep using my Audigy 2 mainly just because it's there to be used, as a leftover part from older systems.
Use your onboard sound and play through a few games. If you don't notice a perceptible difference in sound quality or performance, then no, you don't.
Some games might use dedicated audio hardware to take some of the CPU load with handling audio (I'm speculating), but I suspect that the performance difference would be pretty minor, if it was even perceptible.
Try it and see!
Some articles I've read showed 5%-10% improvements in gaming fps... which is realistically about 3 to 7 frames per second.
Definitely not a big difference, but it's arguably noticeable. I have to say no, though, a dedicated sound card is a waste of money for non-professional use.
I've used onboard sound for my last three computers and had no problems. Like Fugitive says there are some circumstances where they could pay off but unless you use a high-end sound system with your computer I can't see where it would be worth it. And it's not like the processing power and memory onboard solutions use is all that significant.
I have always wondered why so many games let you specify the option of low or high quality audio? Why would you choose low quality audio? Can it really make any perceptible difference in performance? I understand low visual quality for older computers. Buy low audio? Why bother wasting development time implementing such a feature?
The way I understand it, soundcards become useful when, say, you want your computer to transmit some codec or another directly to an audio receiver. When you're watching a movie and want your home theater to use whatever funky encoding is on the DVD... that's when dedicated audio hardware comes in.
I'm looking into getting a card because in spite of my motherboard claiming the contrary, I'm not getting 8 channel sound. I'm only getting two. Onboard sound tends to work very well until you start getting into higher end sound equipment, and then the problems start. I just purchased a 5.1 system + receiver, but it's not being spoken to properly. It's only being fed two channels (Left and Right).
Lucky me, it seems that Creative's vista drivers are still a total mess.
I have an Asus mobo with SoundMax integrated sound. The harddrive interferences I hear through my speakers when I turn the volume very high are scary!
Last edited by FoRmaT; 02-27-2009 at 05:02 PM.
Lower quality audio would take up less memory, if your system doesn't have a lot to spare.Originally Posted by jellyfish
Poopy
Dude, I didn't design it, I just own it.
I have SoundMAX on my motherboard, and it works great. Certainly less problematic than a creative card.
The only caveat is I have to use the analog connections to get 5.1 surround, as the digital outputs only stereo. I have no distortion or background noise in my audio either. My Z-5500 doesn't care that I am piping it analog, for it has the inputs.
I still think soundcards are quite useful. I dealt with a SoundMax machine last year and it made me sick. It does help to have surround speakers or pricier headphones, though. For Elliott, that does sound like it's the X-Fi card malfunctioning.
I guess that makes sense. Memory is often the scarce resource. Thanks.
soundmax and realtek hd have been more than adequate BUT lazy programmers/developers don't test for it even though the majority of their users have it.
for example, assassin's creed pc - there is no dialogue unless you turn down windows sound hw acceleration to lowest--wtf? there were a couple of other games too that i don't recall offhand that the devs were too lazy to test for outside of creative cards.
Oi! Ripped dat humie Soundblaster out and now DoW2 is workin' roight Orky! Thanks everyone!
It's actually running SMOOTHER now. Go figure.
Good point I suppose. But my Realtek-equipped Toshiba gaming laptop from last year pissed me off too; it caused stuttering in games, and I had to use my notebook X-Fi to get it to stop, even though the Realtek sound was superior in Windows.
Until the integrated sound makers work with devs more to get performance up, I'm sticking with Creative. Plus I love the 3D shit X-Fis do with my MP3s.
I got horrible stuttering running BioShock under Vista, with the drivers from Winupdate. I then tried Bioshock under Windows MC 2005, and it worked fine. Try finding new drivers for an older Asus mobo with SoundMax; you're basically left to guessing which of the 2335244226 Realtek and Soundmax drivers work, or combing forums without end.
Creative is horrible. If you want a dedicated sound card, I'd recommend an Asus Xonar card, as they can emulate EAX - which since Vista came out, is all Creative does anyway.
The only reason I use a sound card is because mine gives me an awesome front panel with midi ports and separate volume knobs for my headphones and microphone.
If computer cases came built in with that, I wouldn't want a separate sound card.
I use a sound card because I want 32-bit floating point resolution when digitizing LPs. However, that (and lots of other good stuff) can be had on a $25 Chaintech card.
x-fi xtremegamer is the only creative card that supports standard hd audio front panel connector.
i have a soundcard for ripping vinyl and because my realtek was kind of sketchy w/ some games
Onboard sound can be a tricky beast, particularly for an HTPC that's supposed to pass through 5.1 or 7.1 sound. It doesn't. I think there was one series of NVIDIA motherboards that did that for a brief period of time and now they just don't do that for some reason that I knew at one point but have since forgotten.
I run a Gigabit motherboard with whatever onboard sound they pack in and I don't have a problem wiring directly into my home theater system (5.1) and getting decent sound, but the trick is that I send everything over a bunch of split analog lines into the external decoder ports in the back of the receiver. With that, I haven't noticed any appreciable interference, but the sound in most of the PC games that I play isn't THAT important, so my experience may not be the best indicator. I can say that it has been flawless on the ridiculous amount of television that I watch, though that doesn't spin up the internals nearly as hard.
My onboard sound doesn't cost me framerates. I get full framerates, and in the games where my system can't do that, the sound isn't the reason I'm below 60fps.
I have some form of SoundMAX, by the way. Never been an issue in any way the two years I've had this motherboard.
Fancy that, that's the exact same reason I bought mine. I'm completely dependant on the dam thing, I want to ditch my sound card but everything I use runs through that - Yes I consistently use at least half of those.The only reason I use a sound card is because mine gives me an awesome front panel with midi ports and separate volume knobs for my headphones and microphone.
If computer cases came built in with that, I wouldn't want a separate sound card.
Do you know if you can use the IR port on the front with a remote (possibly the contained one) for WMC?
you need to buy this http://melloware.com/products/intelliremote/
For fellow ADI Soundmax owners...Asus doesn't seem to have updated their onboard sound drivers since 2007 and ADI doesn't supply any, here are drivers from 2008:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/1-vt...r=asc&&start=0
The download links follow these blurbs at the OP at the thread above:
Vista:
5.10.01.6520 & 6.10.01.6520 [17-10-2008] [These drivers includes XP/vista x86-x64 Non-DTS & Vista DTS drivers. DTS drivers has disable the Sonic focus sound controls and replaced with only enable/disable enhancements which is idiotic as only control you will have is on sonic focus control panel. Non-DTS drivers seems to still have old style. However, non of current drivers doesn't support any other speaker setup than stereo without sonic focus enhancements adding these still to recommended as they have no real bugs, supports all equipment and doesn't create overload.] [ADI 1984/86/88/A/B] [Recommended update]:
Windows XP:
v5.10.02.6480 [06-05-2008] New 6480 serie of SoundMAX drivers has also now reached to Windows XP by ASUS. So suggest you test these out also seemed to resolve the High definition BUS driver issue straight. [Recommended update]
Last edited by rei; 03-06-2009 at 03:08 PM.
I was just about to mention that: updating onboard sound processor drivers? hah!
Posting Permissions
