no, youre going to have to say that YOU disagree. im not wrong.

only people who really dont care (that arent that fussed about audio, or would find stereo headphones every bit as good as a 5.1 setup), or dont have the benefit of a previous better experience, arent going to notice a difference.

within a month i went from a dedicated soundcard, to an onboard (which i desperately and continuously worked with, to try and get the most out of) and then BACK to a dedicated, and theres a hell of a difference - AND hes about to buy the same motherboard that I have.

as for being a placebo effect... i wouldnt have worked with it as long and as hard as i did, before yanking a card out of another pc, if i didnt detect a real drop in quality... im pretty lazy, really, and would usually just shrugged and accepted it :D but i did try living with it for a couple of weeks worth of fiddling with settings and making sure i had the best drivers, before id had enough...

the onboard sound is FUNCTIONAL, im not debating that... it was... tolerable... but it didnt give me the same punch and power that the dedicated does - im not an audiophile - im really not overly fussy... im just someone who enjoys his music, games and movies, so i know when something isnt as good as i want it to be.

i guarantee you that if you create two setups, one with a properly set up dedicated soundcard, and one with a proeprly set up onboard, MOST people WILL find that the properly set up dedicated, sounds noticeably better.


at the end of the day, im not 'wrong'... it comes down to personal opinion about how important sound is to the individual. A dedicated IS better than any onboard sound... if you find onboard meets all your requirements, then thats fine... if the OP finds that onboard is all he needs, then thats fine too. BUT if he wants to build a great rig, especially for gaming, i stand by my suggestion that he gets a dedicated soundcard.




though it does probably bear noting that I use a 5.1 setup, i dont know about you... perhaps thats the problem.. speakers matter too... you probably WONT tell a difference between onboard and dedicated if you're not using decent speakers or headset.

After having tried to go the last 6 years or so with highend mobo onboard sound I'd have to agree, even the good mobos have shit soundcards. In addition they're often very futzy with poor drivers.

I run a headset, because the surround on headphones with the right software is infinitely better than it is on 5.1 (especially when your spacial setups doesn't lend itself to 5 speakers. >.>), because the software can use the always set position of the two speakers to trick your mind in to hearing it in any position it needs to.

As for the other point, even when I was running my 5.1 speakers, I've always found the quality of my motherboard to be just as good, now it's possible that I just have one of the rarities with a good onboard sound. :p

Audio quality matters to me, which is why on my old rig I bought the Soundblaster, unfortunately on my new rig I couldn't install it (PCI, both my PCI slots are blocked by the coolers on my video cards), and I seriously have not noticed any difference.

Me personally, I do care, but I simply dont have the ear to pick out a huge difference between quality and poor. So I will simply say, I use on-board and I notice no hissing, static, loss of signal, etc. Having a pretty high quality card at work (grabted I am not playing games but am listening to music) it doesnt sound radically different. Perhaps the tones are deeper, but that could be speakers for all I know.