Soundcard vs. on-board sound

[KillerZ]

Just wanted to ask...  is gaming performance enhanced by using a souncard (even an inexpensive one) vs. the on-board sound on my motherboard?  I only use headphones to play FC2 anyway...  is it worth the trouble of putting a soundcard in?  I only ask because the last time I tried installing a soundcard Windows deleted the mouse driver entry in the registry and it took using the repair windows re-install to fix it (left the soundcard out, btw).  Needless to say, I don't want to go through that again...  Suggestions?

[Art Blade]

Interesting question. Especially if you read about those fancy high-end sound cards with a huge "gamer" tag all across the box. As always, first of all it's your own choice or taste if you say, hell yeah, I can't play without a proper sound card. But the simple answer is: no, it doesn't enhance performance.

To the contrary, if you use all the flimflam of a soundcard, like kind of echo, reverb, superbass and whatnot, it needs to be processed, and soundcards may cause IRQ conflicts or interfere with other hardware. In general it means it's more likely to decrease performance (if only slightly). It does enhance the sound (special gimmics that emulate a cave or race track etc), however, but enhancing sound also means changing. Changing could mean, in the end, loss of quality.

Today's onboard sound chips are usually those Realtec that should provide 5.1 and even 7.1 surround sound, which is good enough for games, music and DVD. The only reason to buy a soundcard would be if you produced studio-quality music on your machine and needed high-end output and maybe input (plugging in keyboards, mics, instruments in general etc).

If you don't hear statics or other electro interferences (buzzing, humming) you should be alright with your onboard soundcard, instead you might want to use your money for better headphones :)

[JRD]

I'd say no... I use headphones as well and it sounds great. Onboard soundcard too.

If you already had a bad experience with soundcards and are satisfied with how your games sound... leave it as it is now.  ;)

[RedRaven]

agree with ART and JRD.

on board sound these days is usually good quality, its all i use. either with headphones or speakers built into the monitor. can hear all animals and insects, mercs, cars, fire, everything. few years back went thru the "sound-card" issues for music production & creation but for any game i'd say spend on RAM and graphics. if your playing thru a new flat screen television they usually have decent speakers built in too. its a law of diminishing returns - spend twice as much on a graphics card and it will be Noticebly better, more you spend better it gets but its much much less increase with sound cards unless you got ears of a bat!

[KillerZ]

Thanks for the input.  What you guys said was pretty much what I thought, I just needed to bounce it off someone else...