WOuld you use onboard audio?

[cnhoff]

Hi,

i have an older Soundblaster Live Value PCI and a new system with an Asus P5B-E mainboard with onboard sound.

Would you rather use the Soundblaster or the onboard sound on a good 2.1 speaker system with an eye on performance hit while using the onboard sound chip, sound quality etc.?

Thanks

 

[LazyGit]

Onboard sound uses CPU time and RAM whereas a card will only use RAM. The card will improve game performance. I'm not using my SB live card because onboard is 7.1 and the card is only 5.1. I have a 2.1 speaker system. I'm a moron.
cheers

 

[crazedmodder]

I've only ever used onboard sound and it's good enough for me. I have a fast enough computer, and I'm pretty sure anyone with a semi-decent system does too, that I don't have to worry about the little bit of performance hit that processing 2.1 sound makes my system take. To be honest I really like onboard sound and would only get a dedicated sound card if I need features that my onboard doesn't support. You could always just run some benchmarks with the sound card in and with onboard sound to see if you are really curious.

 

[tcsenter]

Onboard sound uses CPU time and RAM whereas a card will only use RAM. The card will improve game performance.

Well...sorta. Hardware audio engines use plenty of CPU time, particularly Creative's older products, just not nearly as much as integrated audio. A good card will indeed improve gaming performance, but not by much unless the game heavily utilizes multi-channel audio effects (e.g. EAX).

Compare the performance advantages of Creative's hugely more powerful [and expensive] 10,000MIP X-Fi EMU20K1 v. EMU10K2 or even EMU10K1. 10+ times as powerful = 10% ~ 15% better frame rates in EAX-intensive game benchmarks (hilarious!).

Some integrated audio solutions can handle light multi-channel audio effects with little to no performance penalty, as long as the RAM and CPU are up to the task (e.g. ADI). There is no reason that codecs for integrated audio cannot have very good fidelity for music. There are some pretty good AC97 and HDA codecs these days, but they cost more so they aren't used as frequently as consumer-grade or entry-level codecs.

 

[ChiPCGuy]

I have the motherboard in question, and the on board audio implementation SUCKS. I believe it is a hardware issue with the ADI 1988 codec not properly shielded. ASUS made a great move with the codec, as it is better than any Realtek one, but the implementation is just not there and that is very unfortunate. There is significant hissing, popping, and clicking (especially during SATA hdd access) when utilizing the analog outs. Be warned.

 

[idiotekniQues]

there have been a ton of issues with onboard sound and the p5b series of mobos - primarily crackling and other very annoying interference during audio playback

 

[tcsenter]

I believe it is a hardware issue with the ADI 1988 codec not properly shielded. ASUS made a great move with the codec, as it is better than any Realtek one, but the implementation is just not there and that is very unfortunate. There is significant hissing, popping, and clicking (especially during SATA hdd access) when utilizing the analog outs.

And of course the board designer must pay attention to...well...design issues. That is a big de facto weakness of onboard audio - board designers usually don't spend much time on it.

 

[Gamingphreek]

To answer the question, use the onboard sound. The Soundblaster Live! Value does little offloading and even if it did it is out of date enough that on board will probably result in better performance.

To answer the thread question, the only time I would use on board sound is back in the Nforce 2 MCP-T days. Those were swell . (I also if I had to choose a M/B, one with DFI's Karajan Audio module is very nice as well)

-Kevin