Legit Reviews

I don't mean to spam, but it's more like a question.

I hate onboard sound. I wish it was more like an adapter to a motherboard like USB and IEEE ports and such.

I hate onboard sound especially on SLI motherboards. I like to have a really nice sound card like the xFI with the front panel thing and a great audio console for gaming, entertainment and even audio creation.

It's not like I can't add the xFI to a SLI board, it's just that it's going to get cramped with all the cards being close together.

Why do manufactures insist on throwing in onboard sound? It used to be optional back in the AMD K6 and PII-III processor boards.

top wrote:Why do manufactures insist on throwing in onboard sound? It used to be optional back in the AMD K6 and PII-III processor boards.

Onboard sound can be disabled in the BIOS...

onboard sound? do you bean your system has built in speakers? or a built in sound card?
anyway I have a built in sound card and wont be upgrading it because i think mine is good as it is.. no cons on sound quality..

I can set mine to headphones, 2/2.1 , 4/4.1, 5.1 and 7.1.. I doubt I would use anything other then the 2/2.1 and headphones

Zelig wrote:Onboard sound can be disabled in the BIOS...

I know it can be disabled, but if you want a better sound card it's going to be cramped inside a machine with SLI video cards.

IssE wrote:or a built in sound card?

Built in sound, sorry I should of made that more clear

IssE wrote:anyway I have a built in sound card and wont be upgrading it because i think mine is good as it is.. no cons on sound quality..

I can set mine to headphones, 2/2.1 , 4/4.1, 5.1 and 7.1.. I doubt I would use anything other then the 2/2.1 and headphones

Yeah I know what you mean. I'm just saying if you do a lot of things on the system besides playing games like Watch Movies and do audio creation/editing, the xFI is a good card to have.

And I'm also saying if the manufacture insists on having an additional sound card, why not make it an expansion card instead? Rather than building it directly to the board?

I've seen this on a fata1lty board before, I believed it used a PCI-E 1x slot. It was perfect. But it seems that every board that comes out has the built in sound card. Which makes removing it impossible!

First off this post isn't in an angry or offensive tone, just saying things as I see them.

I don't understand why you are so against having it on the motherboard. Its there because its cheaper than using it on a riser card and the vast majority of people are happy to use integrated audio.

My mobo has the sound card in as a riser slot (AW9D-MAX). Its still the same audio chipset as most of the ones that are soldered to motherboards though, so although you supposedly get some added clarity/performance from cleaner signals (i.e. less interference from surrounding motherboard components) the overall quality/ performance is going to be pretty much the same.

Even though my mobo is on a riser, it uses a proprietary connector (might be an PCIe-1x, but its set in a different alignment to the others on my board) that other cards like the Xfi won't fit in, so you still end up with lots of add in cards cramped together if you want a 'real' sound card.

And the reason you don't get the option of say choosing to have an X-fi built in is; a) because creative won't licence their tech (maybe they will soon, as the dedicated sound card is a shrinking niche market) and b) you'd get interference from other motherboard components reducing audio quality by some.

meh, this sounds like a rant Maybe it was...

Dan

Nah it doesn't sound like ranting to me

For me, I just gotta have the best of everything. Like the best sound card and such (Although people would argue about that for sure, turtle beach against creative, etc.)

I'd figured having a PCI-E 1.x card would be more expensive. It's just that I need some more expansion slots for my current sound card, so the heat off my sound card won't go into one of my video cards.

The way my board is setup, having a exact same card in a PCI-E 1.x would be perfect.

Or maybe on a board having the regular PCI slots first rather than having a PCI-E x16 first and then the PCI slots.

I'm kinda oldskool though when it comes to the sound card thing, even back when the PII mobos came with onboard I still stuck a SB16 card in it

top wrote:Nah it doesn't sound like ranting to me

For me, I just gotta have the best of everything. Like the best sound card and such (Although people would argue about that for sure, turtle beach against creative, etc.)

I'd figured having a PCI-E 1.x card would be more expensive. It's just that I need some more expansion slots for my current sound card, so the heat off my sound card won't go into one of my video cards.

The way my board is setup, having a exact same card in a PCI-E 1.x would be perfect.

Or maybe on a board having the regular PCI slots first rather than having a PCI-E x16 first and then the PCI slots.

I'm kinda oldskool though when it comes to the sound card thing, even back when the PII mobos came with onboard I still stuck a SB16 card in it

Back in the day(PI, II, III etc...) an SB16 blew away anything that was available onboard! Today some of the onboard and add on cards that come with mobo's such as the Crosshair and Striker are as good or better than most PCI based audio cards. Now if you want to do audio importing or editing thats another story!

I have a question for you Top.
If the audio is built on the board and you want to use an add on card. Just disable the onboard audio! Why would you want to remove it? It will not effect the add on card once its disabled nor will it interfere with PCI card space.

There are MoBo out there that come with high-end sound built into them (Creative XF-I ) if you're will to pay for it. If that's what yu were looking for, you should have shopped around a bit and got the type of sound that you were looking for, lots and lots of optios\ns out there if you shop around, you're not just limited to just the standard RealTech 8.1 HD sound.

This one comes to mind real quick, mainly because I have a MSI board.

http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func ... incat_no=1

Audio

• Chip integrated by Creative ® Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio chipset
- Flexible 8-channel audio with jack sensing
- Compliant with Azalia 1.0 spec.

camaroguy1998 wrote:I have a question for you Top.
If the audio is built on the board and you want to use an add on card. Just disable the onboard audio! Why would you want to remove it? It will not effect the add on card once its disabled nor will it interfere with PCI card space.

Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I know how to disable the onboard sound in bios, but the expansion cards will still be cramped especially if you have two video cards in SLI.

Bio-Hazard wrote:There are MoBo out there that come with high-end sound built into them (Creative XF-I ) if you're will to pay for it. If that's what yu were looking for, you should have shopped around a bit and got the type of sound that you were looking for, lots and lots of optios\ns out there if you shop around, you're not just limited to just the standard RealTech 8.1 HD sound.

This one comes to mind real quick, mainly because I have a MSI board.

That's nice, is there an adaptor to add a front bay on this board?

Oh.. EEHH! Intel! GROSS! hehe

The only places I knew of to buy stuff was newegg and tigerdirect. Right now I'm actually working on a system repair kind of deal (More of an upgrade but hey it's all good). I'm getting the last single core processor from AMD (FX-57) and SLI-in two BFG 7900GTXOC's. I'm not ready for dual or quad core processors. I'll get to that when I'm forced to.

I'm sure that there's something out there that made for the AMD side of life as well, I just haven't looked much now that I switched to the dark side............

My option is the complete opposite to top in that I want onboard sound... and video ... and raid ...and etc... When the money comes, I can always disable. And if the motherboard gets upgraded, the old one can easily go into a kid's system without taking every expansion board with it.

top wrote:Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I know how to disable the onboard sound in bios, but the expansion cards will still be cramped especially if you have two video cards in SLI.

Wouldn't it be just as cramped if there was no onboard sound at all?

Zelig wrote:

top wrote:Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I know how to disable the onboard sound in bios, but the expansion cards will still be cramped especially if you have two video cards in SLI.

Wouldn't it be just as cramped if there was no onboard sound at all?

Thanks Zelig, that was my point!
Onboard sound will not make a bit of difference software or hardware wise!

Bio-Hazard wrote:There are MoBo out there that come with high-end sound built into them (Creative XF-I ) if you're will to pay for it.

[/quote]

I am wondering which costs more, having it integrated or buying the card..

moon11 wrote:My option is the complete opposite to top in that I want onboard sound... and video ... and raid ...and etc... When the money comes, I can always disable. And if the motherboard gets upgraded, the old one can easily go into a kid's system without taking every expansion board with it.

I agree with you on some level. It really depends on what you do with your older motherboards. In my case I wouldn't hand my old system to a kid so he can play Backyard baseball on it or whatever. It would go to one of my family members or a gamer who is still running an obsolete system.

Onboard video on the other hand is not a bad thing to have. It's great when your having system problems and need to find out which hardware is faulty. But I've always disliked onboard sound. It may be a good system, but like mentioned earlier, the sound could be intereferd with other components on the motherboard.

Not only that, it doesn't bring the other benefits that I need, like options for audio creation and entertainment environments like for movies and music. Plus you have to think about new game sound technology like OpenAL and other hardware sound options to the point where an expansion card would come in handy. Hence I mean the amount of memory that the card has certainly helps with that.

Sure you can disable it, but it's physically still there, taking up space on the motherboard itself.

Zelig wrote:Wouldn't it be just as cramped if there was no onboard sound at all?

It really depends on how the board is designed. Usually a board without onboard sound has more expansion slots. A board could have plenty of expansion slots even with onboard sound, but then that would cost more, and it may not be ATX compatible especially if you have more than one x16 PCI slots.

IssE wrote:I am wondering which costs more, having it integrated or buying the card.

Definitely buying the card. The best line of cards run easily from 300 to 400 retail.

camaroguy1998 wrote:Thanks Zelig, that was my point!
Onboard sound will not make a bit of difference software or hardware wise!

No I don't believe so. If there's no board sound, then the money can be used to add more expansion slots. Hence adding the regular PCI slots before the x16 slots.

Check out Bluegears card the b-Enspirer its a great sounding card and has support for Vista