Sound cards

**chris_uk_83** · April 10, 2007, 05:47 AM

Is there any point to sound cards?

As far as I can tell, most motherboards come with at least 5.1 surrond built in, and the sound quality depends more on your speakers than your card. It certainly doesn't sound fuzzy, or poor quality (at least it doesn't on mine).

So my question is this: why would anybody buy a sound card?

Or am I missing something big?

**Echbart** · April 10, 2007, 06:13 AM

Yes it is.....if you want more out and in - puts and also it depens how good sound card you have on your mobo.

Are you buying new comp?

**chris_uk_83** · April 10, 2007, 06:15 AM

Not personally, but I've often though of getting a sound card, just to realise that my mobo already does everything I need it to do.

I can understand the point if you're doing musicy things like plugging keyboards and multitrack recorders and stuff in, but I can't see the point if you just want surround sound (and it's already present on your mobo).

**Echbart** · April 10, 2007, 06:24 AM

Well some inegrated sound cards support 5.1 speakers but have low quality of sound ( 8kbit ). You have to have at least 16kbit or more; me 32kbit

**Arakorn** · April 10, 2007, 08:57 AM

I think I have 2 soundcards in my PC... Plus the onboard. I have no idea how Fujitsu-Siemens put it there though...

**Erik** · April 10, 2007, 09:10 AM

I've already discussed this (off-topic) here:
http://twcenter.net/forums/showpost....0&postcount=28

Bottom line:
YES, there is a point to sound cards.
It takes a huge amount of processing to generate sound effects in surround sound.
Creative's top of the line X-Fi's have about as much audio processing power as a Pentium 4.

Onboard sound chips, and some sound cards such as the Creative X-Fi ExtremeMusic, burden the CPU with processing audio, which leaves less CPU time for the rest of your games/applications.

Most games solve this by reducing the number and quality of sound effects when you use onboard audio.
Many games don't even provide surround sound for commonly used "5.1" sound chips like AC'97.

**Niccolo Machiavelli** · April 11, 2007, 03:24 PM

I think there is a point - of course I'm biased because I have an X-Fi Platinum and quite a decent speaker setup, but compared to onboard sound, the X-Fi provides a performance boost with games, better sound quality and overall a wider range of voices, effects etc... (if the game was designed for it, concerning the latter).
I'm happy I bought it and compared to graphic cards, which I find myself exchanging on a yearly basis, the price wasn't that high, given my expectation of it lasting me at least 3 years is correct.

**mrmouth** · April 11, 2007, 08:26 PM

I use onboard sound, which might use up cpu cycles and doesn't have ram like some sound cards do these days. So Im planing on getting a card fairly soon.

**chris_uk_83** · April 13, 2007, 03:00 AM

You may have convinced me to invest when I have some spare money. Any suggestions for one that'll do the job without going overboard?

**sdjenkyn** · April 13, 2007, 06:51 AM

find an Audigy 2 from creative , older is cheaper and its a good card or spend extra money and get the latest but as someone here has posted there are good x-fi's and bad ones .