OnBoard Sound Anygood?

[formulav8]

Is the AC97 Sound found on most boards anygood?

 

[Noriaki]

Dead basic 2 channel audio.
It uses some CPU time, and has very little in the way of features, but it would be sufficient if you are just doing a basic setup.

 

[MichaelD]

Ditto Noriaki's post. Yes, you'll get sound out of it. If you have decent speakers it might even sound ok. However, a separate PCI sound card will not only sound a lot better, it will give you much more flexibility with tuning the sound. You'll also use a lot less of your CPU, which is a good thing. For a basic setup (surfing, email, typing letters) onboard sound is a fine option. But for gaming, MP3, etc, you need a dedicated card.

 

[PowerJoe]

I have on-board sound - not AC97, but a real PCI device (C-Media CMI8738). It does basic stereo output very well. I use it with MP3 every day, and it works very well. I've listened to it through a nice set of headphones (KOSS MAC-5), and there's no audible hiss or distortion.

As for features, it claims to support something called C3D, A3D 1.0, 4-speakers, and some form of digital connection (the last 2 through some connector which I don't currently have). It has drivers for Win95/98, NT4 and Win2000. The Win2000 driver is WDM - only a few 10K's. It also supports multiple waveout streamms (you can hear ICQ while playing MP3).

To sum up - I like it. I have no idea what an SBLive or similar would've got me.

-PJ

 

[TravisBickle]

put it this way, onboard sound is more tolerable than onboard 3d for the average user! onboard sound only exists to make things cheaper, you know...

 

[Dulanic]

Depends, C-Media is ALOT better then AC97. But a SB Live Value will beat them thats for sure.

 

[Noriaki]

If you have a PCI sound card built into your motherboard, that's a whole different ballgame than using the Soft AC97 codec. Gigabyte uses a pretty decent creative 4 channel PCI soundcard on some of their boards. I still wouldn't take it over a separate soundcard, but some of those are decent.

The SoftAC97 is VERY VERY basic.