On board sound vs. sound card

  • Thread starter Thread starter James E Middleton
  • Start date Start date
No.... but if you get a sound card that is expensive you may have more sound
effects, channels, surround etc...

if you dont care about that stuff, no need to get a card.
 
Yes! A dedicated PCI-based sound card will free up
system resources currently allocated to an onboard
audio chip. If you install a new sound card, make sure
to disable the onboard audio in your BIOS.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

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:

| Will my system run better if I switch from onboard sound to a PCI card?
 
And the new card will use the same or possibly even more resources. What
would be the difference? Without knowing what chipset the onboard sound uses
and what PCI card the OP is considering no one could say one way or the
other.
 
Carey Frisch said:
Yes! A dedicated PCI-based sound card will free up
system resources currently allocated to an onboard
audio chip. If you install a new sound card, make sure
to disable the onboard audio in your BIOS.
Click to expand...


But of course the PCI audio card will use resources...
so there will be no improvement in system performance
(not that an audio card would make a difference anyway)

The main reason for not usong on-board audio is mainly for the quality
of your audio and possible add'l features.
 
Generally speaking, most dedicated soundcards will almost always
perform better (both CPU wise and sound quality wise) because there
is more hardware devoted for the task at hand (I.E. producing sound).

Comparably, a dedicated sound card has many chips and transistors to
create sound, whereas many of the integrated on-board solutions have
only 1 chip, few transistors, and often rely on software emulation to
produce sound. This causes CPU load and can also degrade the sound
experience (and even cause the sound to "stutter").

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

---------------------------------------------------------------------------­----------------

:

| And the new card will use the same or possibly even more resources. What
| would be the difference? Without knowing what chipset the onboard sound uses
| and what PCI card the OP is considering no one could say one way or the
| other.
|
| --
| Kerry
 
Generally speaking I agree with you. There are however many exceptipns to
this general rule. There are motherboards with very good sound built in.
There are also very cheap sound cards that will perform very poorly, worse
than most one chip onboard sound solutions. Without knowing what motherboard
and what sound card no one could say which was best or how performance would
be affected.
 
Yes it will perform better, in precisely the same way that a decent graphics
card will improve the graphics performance of your PC, especially when
playing games.

The Audio card, will have it's own audio processor and so takes this element
away from relying on your CPU to handle this work. As Carey said, you must
disable your on-board stuff in the BIOS.

However, you didn't say why you wanted a dedicated card? If it is just for
internet music etc....you will hear no difference as the quality of internet
mp3 files (etc) is generally poor (ie 64 or 128kbps). If you want to start
recording music using dedicated software (like I do) then a PCI Audio card is
a MUST to use its Audio & MIDI interface.

Neil.
 
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