Onboard sound

[cypherotu]

Does anyone use onboard sound or is it generally frowned at? The mother board I am currently looking at is
Asus A8N-SLI NForce4 SLI Audio/GB-LAN/IEEE-1394/PCI-E/SATA/DDR/ATX 64 939
It comes with an 8 chanel onboard sound card but most reviews are vague about how good it is.
Would something like this be comparable to many mainstream sound cards or is looking for one that isnt integrated a better idea?

 

[zerodayATK]

i would say... go wiht onboard sound for now.. i have it on my board its fine it pumps music fine... it wont be at the full quality as the sound cards .. but if you are strapped for cash go with out the sound card for now.......

 

[Sui]

uhhh its realtek

Audio Chipset Realtek ALC850

and you can bet that it sucks. I have a realtek onboard and the **** thing is so poor that I can hear my harddrive through my speakers. When using teamspeak everyone could hear themselfs .....when I was wearing headphones! Realtek belongs on somethingawful.com. Companys love realtek because it only costs like 15 cents to add onboard audio, but I rather pay extra to not have them on my board.

 

[alexsabree]

ok.... put it this way.

On-Board sound can only produce 32 sounds at once, which is not even comparable to 128 sounds on X-Fi

U could get the best speakers out there and it would sound like cheap speakers cause u have on-board. I dont have x-fi but i have heard of the reviews and suggestions on what to buy, and there all say the same.

But if u are just using headphones that arent quality, tehn onboard or a creative live! sound card would be fine. But if u have any speakers that are $50 and up u would need al least a sound card better than Live!

 

[brady]

onboard sound takes up way too many resources... your system will thank you for getting a sound card.

 

[alexsabree]

It takes almost 15% cpu usage on some games, plus on some games it skips. I really need to upgrade real soon