Onboard sound question

**nzgfxguru** · December 25th, 2004, 11:13 PM

I am building up a PC and have a few questions about onboard sound.

1. Is onboard sound as efficient as sound cards?...I am considering a cheap creative soundblaster card but have seen that most cheap mobo's have onboard 5.1 sound.

2. If I go with onboard sound will it use a lot of system resources...memory, processor etc?...ie will it lag games?

I would be putting together a 2.8ghz p4, 512mb ram, radeon 9600 128mb pro and possibly a sound card depending on the answers in here. I am undecided on mobo.

**Archer** · December 26th, 2004, 06:02 AM

Lots of modern boards come with onboard sound and it should be no different resourse wise to a seperate card.

**TechZ** · December 26th, 2004, 06:09 AM

If you want to play games, get a decent soundcard, pick up a SB Audigy Gamer or something, shouldnt be too expensive, and get 512x2 ram. better for games, cause of Dual Channel Memory, if youre mobo supports it, make best use of what youre paying for.

**TechZ** · December 26th, 2004, 06:14 AM

As far as Mobo is concerned, we could recommend plenty, but it all comes down to whats available where u live, what you want it for, and how much you willing to pay. Give us some more info as to what the machine will be doing most of the time.

**nzgfxguru** · December 26th, 2004, 05:26 PM

Thanks Archer and Techz.

I really dont think my questions were fully answered though.

The reasons why I need cheap equipment is I am limited to a strict budget, I am trying to get as much bang for my buck as possible.

I cannot afford twin 512mb ram because I would have to sacrifice the abilities of the video card. I need to know if I can buy a mobo with onboard sound that won't be too resource hungry, so I can save some money, possibly, on a sound card. Plus there are so many mobo's out there now with onboard sound too.

Techz, the games it will be running are Battlefield 1942/Vietnam, UT2004 and a few basic rpg's.

**Archer** · December 26th, 2004, 06:17 PM

Personally Id say you`ll be fine with on-board sound as I think quality can be as good mid range separates.As to board makes Id say Gigabyte or ASUS but everyone has their own preferences.

**TechZ** · December 27th, 2004, 04:05 AM

Archers, right sacrifce a bit of audio, but dont skimp on the video if u want to game. IF ur getting a Dual Channel MB, then get Dual channel RAM, 2x256, if not 2x512, Dual Channel Memory makes a heck of a difference if memory intensive app, like GAMES.

In fact new mobos, based on Intel chipsets come with HD 7.1 Audio, which is pretty darn good!

nzgfxguru, for us to totally answer your question, we would need a round figure of how much a strict budget is.
MB recommendations: GigaByte, Asus, MSI, Abit
but as archer pointed out, everyone has their own experiences.