Onboard sound - how much performance loss?

[knouri]

Hi all,

I'm specing out my new rig and I was wondering, how much performance is lost by using the onboard sound on most mainboards? Can anybody point me towards any benchmarks that are out there?

I'm looking at pairing the ECS Sis755 board with an AMD64 3000+ and was wondering if I should throw in the extra $50 to get a cheap Audigy to give me an extra boost.

Sound quality wise, I'm usually content with onboard audio.

Thanks!

 

[Nebor]

Throw in the money to get an OEM Audigy 2 from newegg. Onboard sound sucks...

 

[microAmp]

Just so you know the ECS 755-A might run the memory at 166 MHz and not 200 MHz like it should.

AMD MB forums

I returned mine for that, and didn't with with the 755-A2 BIOS.

 

[knouri]

arg... that's a real shame re: the ECS board.

Looks like I'm waiting for NF3 250 like everyone else now.

Thanks for the info guys.

 

[EeyoreX]

The onboard sound on my MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR doesn't suck. I'd go so far as to say it's comparable, or better than (to my ears at any rate) my Audigy 1 card. Onboard sound used to suck, but in general I do not agree that it does with newer boards. Audiophiles will, of course, disagree, and I would agree with them. But for most computer use it is fine. Mine is for light gaming and listening to mp3s. I found the CPU cycles used in my case to be unnoticable. With a 2800+ I have plenty to spare.

\Dan

 

[KnightPalatine]

ECS should soon ship an updated BIOS that fixes the memory problem. See thread here.

 

[0roo0roo]

nforce boards can have decent sound. i think tomshardware did an onb oard sound comparison. my bet is ecs onboard is lousy

 

[0roo0roo]

http://www17.tomshardware.com/game/20030405/index.html

cousres doesn't consider sound quality

 

[knouri]

Thanks for the link, that's exactly what I was looking for!