On board sound and graphics.

daveza

daveza

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For normal and gaming purposes is there any reason today to have a seperate soundcard - the on board ones seem hi-tech enough ?

Also, how does one compare on board graphics with seperate pci graphics cards - eg, do the latest boards have better graphics than say an Nvidia FX 5200 ?
 
Yes, the latest nvidia and ATI/AMD boards have better onboard than a 5200. But only ATI/AMD have Intel processor and AMD onboard graphics, while nvidia only has AMD chipsets with onboard graphics.
 
When I built my AMD dual core system last year, I used my onboard sound for a while, but then realised that it used quite of bit of my processing power under gaming load. My FPS suffered under the strain and the sound was good, but not great. I then bought a Creative X-Fi ExtremeGamer card and I realised that I should have done it long ago. The sound is amazing and my FPS has improved.

You can still get away with using onboard sound, but onboard graphics is a definate no-no in my book.
 
Well, truthfully...
Onboard sound is sufficient.

I haven't read much about people getting peformance boosts in their FPS when they upgrade their soundcard, EXCEPT when they had FAR too little Ram installed.

Your sound uses very little CPU power, as well as < 64MB of Ram.
 
Onboard graphics and gaming don't belong in the same sentence.

Onboard sound is usually okay for gaming - especially if you have one of the good ones. If you want EAX or digital surround, then you'll want a sound card such as a Creative X-Fi. Music and movies sound much better with one, but game noises tend to sound the same.
 
Some of my clients have kids who just want to play Sims or Age of Empires type games .

There must be a ' brand x on board graphics is equivalent to a Nvidia xxxx card ' list somewhere ?

Same with laptops - how does one compare the built in cards on offer ?
 
daveza said:
For normal and gaming purposes is there any reason today to have a seperate soundcard - the on board ones seem hi-tech enough ?

Also, how does one compare on board graphics with seperate pci graphics cards - eg, do the latest boards have better graphics than say an Nvidia FX 5200 ?
Click to expand...

If you're going to use just about any PC speakers (yes even the expensive ones) you'll hardly hear the difference. If you're serious about sound and have decent amp/speaker setup or decent headphones, get a decent Creative card at the very least.
 
try going from onboard to something cheap like creative value

the difference is huge

music is much better with a simple cheap creative card
 
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