sound card or onboard audio?

[Siphon]

I have a MSI K8N Neo4 mobo and I am wondering if I should invest the extra money to get a sound card and not use the onboard audio. Will I see great improvements with a soundcard in games/music?

If it is worth it:
I will get either the CREATIVE Sound Blaster Live 24bit or the CREATIVE Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Value.

Is it worth the extra 30 bucks for the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 or is the Sound Blaster Live sufficient?

 

[Kuberr]

Nah. The only diference you'll see is more variety in music, and possibly EAX, which is environmental sound. I use an Audigy ZS2, but that's really because I have 5.1. Save your 30 bucks for something else, in my opinion.

 

[Kage]

Well tehre will be actually, and I've used onboard against real sound in a PCI slot.

The motherboard audio tends to use more resources, i.e your CPU, which can really affect it. For instance I have a Realtek on mine, which is a 5 channel audio inbuilt. Now, the computer when it was doing something that needed the CPU, cut off the sound and made it jump because it couldn't get enough resources to run the sound, and this will happen in games and other applications too.

I would advise to get a sound card dedicated to it, that won't use an resources. So I would definetly go for it

 

[Kuberr]

Ahh, that explains a lot.

 

[Siphon]

Ok, I'm going to get a sound card now, but which one should I get? Is there a big difference between the Sound Blaster Live and Sound Blaster Audigy 2?

 

[Nik00117]

I hear takeing the load off of your mobo is good. I'm getting a sound card. I heard one review of where a man bought a 9.99 sound card. His FPS went up bya bout 15 or 20.