onboard sound question

[Maxx]

hi i've just upgraded my pc to a intel i3 processor overclocked at 4ghz. The only issue is the motherboard did not have a spare slot for my pci-e soundcard so im currently using the on board sound. Does anyone know if i will get a noticable decrease in performance when playing newer games? I tried it on a few things and not noticed anything yet (not games tho only emulators)

 

[Griff]

Depends on a few factors.

Namely what onboard sound the motherboard utilises, what games you play and what you're used to.

I know plenty of gamers that are perfectly happy with onboard sound but I find a decent dedicated soundcard, Creative X-Fi or Asus Xonar, much much better.

Edit - Just read that back again. Performance loss? Not that you'd notice.

 

[Cookie]

You won't notice any performance loss tbf

 

[Darren S]

You say there's no space for the PCI-E - do you have space for a standard PCI card?

I'm still using my X-Fi Fatal1ty on PCI and it still handles everything I throw at it, games wise. In fact, Total War : Napoleon has the option for creating a 300MB sound cache and supports 256-channels and its still stutter-free.

Worth considering if you can pick one up cheap?

D.

 

[Maxx]

yea theres 1 pci slot free but im it will be a tight squeeze due to the heatsink on my gfx card. its a shame really that my sound card was not a pci card

 

[Darren S]

yea theres 1 pci slot free but im it will be a tight squeeze due to the heatsink on my gfx card. its a shame really that my sound card was not a pci card

Still worth a shot though - unless your GFX runs very hot? I've got my X-Fi sandwiched between the ATi 4890 above it and the AGEIA Physx card below it. Literally about 2mm clearance between the cards - lol.

D.

 

[Krispwee]

^ Same for me. My Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series ( Catchy name. ) is smack bang next to my gfx card with a TV card just underneath it. Not had any issues apart from the Creative drivers being worse than death.

Also On-Board sound makes peoples ears bleed.

 

[Darren S]

^ Same for me. My Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series ( Catchy name. ) is smack bang next to my gfx card with a TV card just underneath it. Not had any issues apart from the Creative drivers being worse than death.

Also On-Board sound makes peoples ears bleed.

Hehehe - I know what you mean! But to be fair, the Win7 64-bit ones have been fine (for me anyway). On Vista-64? An absolute joke.

Apparently Auzentech are the dogs nutts when it comes to driver support, but I've never tried one of their cards.

D.