Old Audigy vs Onboard Sound

[DougMcDonald]

Hi Guys,

I have a though about my forthcoming pc upgrade, can anyone spread some light on?

In my current pc I have a fairly old audigy 2 pro card (not sure quite which model, its got gold plated outputs, including firewire) and I am wondering how it would fair up to the onboard sound in the P5B Deluxe I will shortly be ordering.

I'm not sure quite what the specs are on the Mobo sound and although generally worse than hardware soundcards, I'm wondering if the old audigy is soo old that it might have been superseeded by on board sound.

Any ideas?

[alsenior]

with the older audigy you will get fully hardware accelerated sound and it will be able to handle more voices in games

[DougMcDonald]

That's what I would have thought, but I've always had problems getting the hardware sound to work with it.

I've heard some pretty damning reviews of the card from time to time.

[kalniel]

If the drivers play nice, you'll reduce the CPU load with the audigy card. However many modern games work better with onboards (and sound better) than with SB cards.

[DougMcDonald]

Valuable info, but it still leaves me abit 50/50 on what to do

[sitalchauhan]

I've always had problems getting the hardware sound to work with it.

I would personally save the headache of trying to get the sound card to work properly and stick with the onboard sound, and then buy a newer sound card later on once I had saved some more money up. I doubt you would be able to notice any difference in sound quality between your old audigy 2 and the new onboard sound chips...

[Zak33]

I would personally save the headache of trying to get the sound card to work properly and stick with the onboard sound, and then buy a newer sound card later on once I had saved some more money up. I doubt you would be able to notice any difference in sound quality between your old audigy 2 and the new onboard sound chips...

agreed

[Mossy]

agreed

I have just bought an Audigy 2 ZS off OVERCLOCKER in sell you stuff section for this exact reason.

I have an Asus P5B Deluxe and the onboard sound was crackling when any volume was added to speakers, I still recommend a sound card rather than onboard. I updated everything but still got problems the result was to buy one and the sound is excellent now.

[Zak33]

its cos i hate soundblaster drivers....

[DougMcDonald]

I agree with Paulm@scan in that if the onboard sound has issues, I will have to get another sound card (or re-use the current one)

But I also agree with zak33, the creative drivers are a bunch of w@nk - i managed to find a cut down driver, but it still has a relatively large memory footprint and tries to start apps up on startup.

I think i'll try the onboard sound, then if problems occur transplant the old card into the pc, or as sitalchauhan suggests, go with on board for the time being and save up some cash for something good in the future.