Onboard- vs. Individual- Sound Card

pallethecop

pallethecop

Member
How big difference is there between onboard and individual sound cards nowdays?
Is it worth the money for a regular gamer and movie watcher?
Please write down + and - whats is your opinion and what labels, models are you using?


Thankful for a answer!!
 
Two sides. If you want to spend the money on a good card, yes its worth it. If you just go for a 20 to 40 buck card, your wasting your money.
 
Onboard sound cards are more subject to electrical (conveniently-named) noise, which can deaden quality. This quality loss isn't normally noticed until you get the crystal clarity of a somewhat-independent sound card which is an audiophile's fix!

Onboard
+ Cheap
+ Integrated into board, so no PCI slot used
+ Convenient
- Subject to noise
- Lower quality manufacturing and parts
- Onboard sound becomes dysfunctional, entire board must be replaced.

Individual Sound Card
+ High quality build
+ Less affected by electrical noise
+ Analog output options
+ Modification-friendly (ask bomberboysk :) )
+ All-around better sound
+ Eye candy
- Expensive
- Can be cumbersome for those who aren't experienced with computers
- PCI slot taken up
 
I have the Xonar D1 sound card paired up with M-Audio AV40 and Polkaudio PSW10 subwoofer. I can say that a good pair of speakers will sound MUCH better than a good sound card and a regular pair of speakers. Thus, unless you have nice speakers, I would suggest you upgrade those first.

And no, a $50 Logitech surround sound system does not count as good speakers.
 
Generally a high end quality sound card will out perform an onboard sound chip.
But most modern onboard sound chips are on par with any average sound cards these days.

IMO most high end cards are only purchased for reasons such as Music industry where it is important to have the extra features required for their tasks.
 
Unless you have good speakers to back them up either option is junk. If you do have good speakers then the independent sound card option is worth it to back up your good speakers. If your not big on audio quality then there is really no point to waste your money on good speakers and a good card, just use some cheap speakers with the onboard. If you do go the independent route, just make sure you spend money on a good card and a good set of speakers. The nice thing about sound cards is if you spend money now on a good one, they will last you a long time because technology in terms of sound cards does not move nearly as fast as say, video cards or processors. Im still rocking my Audigy 2 Gold edition and although it shows its age, its still a beast of a card with my 7.1 Creative Labs surround speakers. Its time for me to get an upgrade but considering I got about 8 years of quality service from it I really cant complain.
 
Thanks everyone for your replys. Just to clear some points I can tell you about my sound system.

My sound-card is an onboard sound-card/sound-chip on the ASUS RAMPAGE II Gene:

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/asus_rampage_ii_gene/

SupremeFX X-Fi onboard 8 -Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
EAX® Advanced™ HD 4.0
X-Fi CMSS®-3D
X-Fi Crystalizer™
Creative ALchemy

My AV Receiver is an YAMAHA RX-V480rds 7.1 Cinema DSP with Digital DTS Surround and Dolby Digital

My speakers is from a known finnish loudspeaker maker Olavi Räsänen known as OR Loundspeakers OR-HI series:

http://www.or-loudspeakers.fi/or-loudspeakers/fi/kaiuttimet/or_hi_sarja/index.php

http://www.or-loudspeakers.fi/or-loudspeakers/fi/subwooferit/or_gsw20.php

so, back to the point. Im have considered to buy a Individual Sound Card, and now Im wondering do I really need one, can I as a normal person and not as an audio expert hear any difference in the sound produced by a onboard or individual. :o
 
How are you going to be connecting to your receiver from the computer? In terms of what output are you going to be using? That plays a big roll, honestly if your just going to be tunneling the audio to your receiver then it really doesn't matter what sound card you have because the receiver is going to be handling the processing of the audio anyways. If your computer does not have a digital output than you may want to get a new card simply to get the correct output that you need.
 
Yeah! Ofc, now I feel stupid.. It really doesnt matter what soundcard I have becaus my receiver is doing the work :rolleyes:
That will say a cheap sound card will do aslong as it has surround multichannel output..

Thanks for wakeing me up. :good:
 
It doesnt need any multichannel outputs if your not using speakers directly from it, so if your going from pc to your receiver just use Toslink or S/PDIF cables both carry multichannel audio.
 
Ok, but then im back to problem number one. Im still not getting any sound from my back and center speakers..:confused:
I have the computer connected via spdif to receiver but still nothing. I have to connect the receiver to my ps3 and test it with a dvd movie. If its still not working aftar that, the receiver is broken..
 
Youve got two threads on the same subject going and its getting me all backwards lol

In your other thread your screen shot shows that your monitor is hooked up using hdmi and your audio is also routing through HDMI. What could be happening is that is that your audio is filtering through HDMI. So try a few things... first off, try disabling HDMI audio, if that doesnt work then look in your motherboard manual to see if it has an option for "HDMI passthrough" it could be either a jumper on our board to set to disable it, or it may be a bios option.

Also, do you have any other options in terms of PC outputs and Receiver inputs that you may be able to try a different type of connection? Maybe toslink?
 
Heh, these two threads is making me dizzy, they both somehow ended up including almost the same things :D and this one is a little off topic

But I have some good news......IT WORKS!! :good: no idea what was the particular thing that made it work, I did several things like,
updated the sound drivers and creative control console, I obviously had an additional Digital Audio Connector (an additional spdif output)
in my pc that somehow wasent connected to my mobo (dont think this was the reason for not getting sound :D:D) and when I got sound from
2channels it was via stereo-rca cable, and last off I had my receiver setup on "DTS", switch it over to "AUTO" and viola.


So thanks all for your patience, and soz :o
 
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