Integrated Audio:Good idea or not?

[LuckyDog]

I am looking to build my first system. I am thinking about getting an Athlon with the ASUS A7M266 motherboard. Almost every vendor I found included Cmedia CMI8738 audio with the board. First, I am wondering if that is a very good system sound system. I was thinking about getting a SBLive 5.1 PCI card. I am wondering if the integrated audio will cause any problems with that card. Can anyone help me out?

 

[AnimEva]

personally i dont think so because you can just disable the integrated sound

 

[Boonesmi]

i like integrated audio, even though it steals a few cpu cycles its such a small amount it doesnt hurt at all.

also i think the sound quality is plenty good enough for listening to mp3's and playing games

some people are really into audio and for them the onboard stuff isnt ok, but like animeva said, its easy to disable it and install a sound card

 

[CurtOien]

You can disable it and put in some good sound.
Some day when you go to sell your system, pull your good sound and enable the on board.

 

[acexg1]

My onboard C-media audio works fine for me, but if you do go with onboard audio, I think you want it to be a hardware solution, like the C-media chip, and not a software codec, like AC97. Also, here's a question: does the A7M266 use the via 686B southbridge? If so, is it ok to use a SBLive /w it?

 

[Dan]

I upgraded to an EPoX 8KTA3/+ a couple of weeks ago and had planned to rely on the onboard sound. I'm not a gamer so the first few days everything was fine ... then I played a few mp3's. It was horrible -- lots of skipping. I disabled the onboard sound and, until I get a Santa Cruz, I'm using my Live Value card.

 

[BadBllock]

I don't use my onboard audio (8K7A+), but i have the KUROUTO with the same chip. I like.

 

[DongTran]

The onboard sound that I have on both my durons is the Via 4 in 1 garbage. It works fine, no frills, I mean it works. The sound card that I actually use in mine is the Zoltrix Nightingale, based on the CMI 8738 chipset. The reason why I like it is it has 5.1 output with coax and toslink input and output connectors, and it was $21. works great.

other than that, I wouldn't "upgrade" to a live, get something like a muse, santa cruz, acoustic edge, blah blah.

 

[Coligeon]

Well, I had nothing but problems with my onboard sound. Probably had to do with the company, Crystal, but anyway, it was funny though, when I was playing Starcraft, every time I'd click something while in the setup parts, I'd get this n ice static noise lol. GOt me so Irratated, so just went out adn bought an Aureal vortex. Fixed the probelm, but I am still having problems with that onboard crap, it still recognises it for some reason, that's even after moving a jumper over to Disable it. Sometimes when I restart my computer, it will go to Msdos and say some crap about this Crystal initialization utility, so I'll have to either just type in win to continue booting up, type in edit msdos.sys and then change the valu of I Think bootgui to 1 and then the problem doesn't occur for around 1 week, then it all starts over again lol. So, to cap that all up, I've had nothing but problems with it.

 

[yakko]

I bought a Sound BLaster Live 5.1 MP3 and it sounds like crap. I think the onboard AC97 sounds better. It is not what I want but until I get something else it is fine.

 

[Athlon4all]

No, unless it's nForce Integrated Audio.

 

[Peter]

People, please (finally) get one single point:

AC97 "software codec" ... bullshit, sorry. AC97 is a digital standard bus that connects the sound ENGINE and the analog CODEC. Here, PROCESSED sound data go in and out.

Now whether your sound solution is a CPU cycle eater or not does NOT depend on how the CODECs are connected, but on how stupid or intelligent the sound ENGINE is, and on what system bus it resides.

PCI sound chips may be intelligent bus masters or stupid CPU cycle eaters - as may chipset-integrated sound engines. On modern chipsets that interconnect their stuff through a fast non-PCI bus, chipset-integrated sound may even be faster than a PCI card.

Good chipset sound engines are found in SiS 540/630/730 all-in-ones and VIA 8231/8233 south bridges. Stupid ones are in Intel 8xx and VIA 686. Haven't seen ALi's at work yet.

regards, Peter

 

[Archknight]

I think is better to go with the SB!Live.

AC97 better than SB!Live, it usually go the other way around for me. Strange!

 

[Garet Jax]

Luckydog,

If you decide to buy a new sound card, you may want to look into the

Santa Cruz

or the

Hercules Game Theatre XP

I have been a SoundBlaster consumer since the first 8 bit card came out in the early 90s, but I think these two (especially the Santa Cruz) provides a better bang for the buck.

 

[Zuluwarrior]

HMMMM

Buy.com has the SantaCruz for like 70 bucks!
and a five buck off coupon for first time shoppers

That sounds pretty yummy for a generic SB Live replacement......

 

[GundamF91]

Onboard sound will usually do....but not good for anything serious. If you have mP3 or games, definitely get hardware accelerated stuff. Think of it as how hardware 3D card changed 3D scene.

I don't know why everyone is dissing SBLive! it's working just fine for me, and I don't intend on replacing it before it craps. Sound and CPU utilizing wise, it's working perfectly.

 

[snidy]

I disabled mine, it sounded ok, but the acoustic edge is way better.