Onboard vs. Dedicated Sound 7

[kfgjn43]

Hi. I have an ASUS M4A78 PLUS mobo in my desktop with an AMD Athlon X2 Black 7750 CPU. The ASUS has a Realtek ACL887 DSP. I heard that a dedicated card will yield higher FPS in games and higher sound quality. But I can't find any specs for the ACL887. So I don't know what kind of sound card I'd need to buy to get better results. They can get pretty expensive (from $15 to over $200). Does anyone know? Thanks.

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[IRudebwoy]

I'm pretty sure FPS is frames-per-second which is a measurement of graphics card performance.

And unless your doing professional sound editing and processing the type of sound card really won't matter.

 

[kfgjn43]

So, a sound card won't improve audio quality in my case? And yes, FPS is frames per second. The FPS goes down the less powerful your CPU, graphics card, and memory are. The theory is that if your CPU doesn't have to render the sound, then it can concentrate more on graphics. But I don't know how powerful my ACL887 is, or how it compares to the sound cards for sale on Newegg.

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[kmcferrin]

Back in the day I was a big advocate of using add-in boards from Soundblaster or whoever for audio. Yes, it was definitely true back then that most integrated audio solutions relied on CPU processing to render sound, and that this could have a negative impact on video performance when playing games. But usually it was only a couple of frames per second.

These days it's not quite the same. If you go back 5 years or more, your CPU was doing a lot of work to get data ready for the video card. Depending on the video card, even some of the triangle setup could be taking place on the CPU. In those cases, you wanted as many cycles on the CPU free as possible. Of course these days the GPUs are much, much more powerful and do most of the setup and rendering on the video card. If you look at some reviews at Tom's or Anand's (or wherever) you'll see that there is relatively little, if any, difference between different speed CPUs using the same video card.

Now on top of the fact that the CPU is less involved in graphics these days, also keep in mind that most people are using either dual or quad core CPUs, and there's even less of an issue. Unless you're running one of the very few games that makes heavy use of a second or third CPU core, the odds are pretty good that you're going to have free CPU cycles that can be safely devoted to audio processing if needed.

Of course, these days many of the onboard audio solutions are no longer software-based. Audio is one area that's really more or less hit the peak for PCs. Everyone can do midi and synth and 3D sound effects, so there's not much of a differentiating factor. Features that were considered high-end 5 years ago are now included in integrated chipsets. I don't know about the ALC887 specifically, but I believe that the 885 was hardware-based.

I guess what I'm trying to say is don't worry about it. The odds are pretty good that IF there is a difference between the ALC887 and an add-in board you're probably only going to notice it in benchmarks, and even then it will be very slight.

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[kfgjn43]

ok. Thank you very much, kmcferrin. Lots of good details in that post.

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[danomac]

I agree with kmcferrin, but with one addition:

Keep in mind that the signal to noise ratio on most onboard sound cards is abysmal, it leads to buzzing through speakers and such.

Add-in cards usually have a better signal/noise ratio so that it won't pick up interference from the other electrical components in your PC.

As an example, one of my onboard sound cards has a S/N ratio of 70 dB, and the add in card I put in it had a ratio of 110 dB. As a result the onboard card would pick up interference and buzz at low volumes whereas the add in card wouldn't.

My two cents.

 

[paparazi]

Interesting debate:
The point is....there is a difference albeit slight, onboard audio does take up more CPU processing than an addon card.
The negative effect on gaming is far less than it used to be but it is still present, it all depends on how serious a gamer you are and how much you value the few percent increase an addon audio card would offer.
Personally I think it is best just to spend any additional monies on upgrading the graphics card as this is always going to yield the best improvements in frame rates for your money. The extra few percent gained with an addon sound card is an expensive way to improve performance but if you were one on those NO EXPENSE SPARED users, who just wants the ultimate gaming machine, an addon card is still recommended on top of the ultimate graphics card (whatever that is at the time of building)
Martin

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[kmcferrin]

paparazi's got it right I think. Faced with choosing between a $200 video card with a $100 sound card or a $300 video card and integrated audio, I'm going with the $300 card. It should give you much better graphics performance (I'm assuming from the original question that was your concern) than have an add-in audio card.

Danomac makes a heck of a point with the signal to noise ratio. I've had some boards that were pretty crackly and bad, but my current (albeit old) motherboard actually has pretty good onboard audio:

Integrated ALC889A 8-Channel High Definition audio with 106 dB Signal to Noise ratio, fully support Blu-ray/ HD DVD playback

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[kjv1611]

If you have a sensitive ear to sound quality, then I think you'll still get better sound quality from an add-in card... that is, if it's a higher-end one. However, most people will not ever notice the difference, as far as sound quality. The same goes for performance. You might could chart the performance difference, but it's about 99.99999% certain you'd never see a performance difference.

If you do decide to buy a card, I'd recommend these from my own usage history:
1. M-Audio Delta 1010LT - It aint cheap, but my oh my is it nice. It gives crystal clear sound - cleaner, clearer than any other onboard/add-on card I've used to date. Then again, most folks aren't thinking THAT much about the sound quality when playing an FPS game. ;0)

2. The Creative Labs cards have always been good, and are still good. I got a little miffed for a while with their Vista drivers issues, but at least as of Windows 7, that all seems to be taken care of.

3. From what I've read (not personally experienced), the new Asus Sonar sound cards are very good, and in some cases better than what Creative Labs offers. I've not tested, so I can't say for sure.

I do audio editing/recording with the computers I own and others I have access to, so the sound quality is more important to me than most folks who are going to do any gaming. ;0) I haven't played any games on the machine with the M-Audio Detal 1010LT card, so I cannot specifically speak for the benefit for gaming. If I ever find a deal on another 1010LT (and have extra funds at the same time), then I'll pick one up for myself at home, and I'll have to see if I can notice a difference in gaming.... don't count on it, it's a rare case to find one of those on the cheap.

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[Glenn9999]

Not much can be said that hasn't already. But for what I notice, sound quality isn't much of an issue on games anyway, since the gaming developers downgrade the quality. Most games I've seen have about 64-128kbps sound on the high-end (if you compare it to MP3 encoding), which sounds on the bad side no matter what sound card you have.

And has been said, onboard sound isn't much issue on the CPU end of it. So it seems, the only real reason you'd want a dedicated audio card is if you do something where sound quality matters, like sound editing/recording or handling very high quality sound source regularly.

I'm waiting for the white paper entitled "Finding Employment in the Era of Occupational Irrelevancy

 

[tf1]

Also note that the newer top-end graphics card process the sound by passing the digital stream through the HDMI cable or diverted to the local S-P/DIF connection. So no audio device (either integrated or by dedicated card) is required.

Of course, you'll need either an AV amplifier of a top-end PC speaker system with a digital input. But that seems to be what you are aiming for?


Regards: Terry

 

[kfgjn43]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

Of course, you'll need either an AV amplifier of a top-end PC speaker system with a digital input. But that seems to be what you are aiming for?

I should have mentioned that. I have a stereo from the 1990s that I use for sound. I have a cable with two RCA connectors on one end that plugs into the back of the stereo. The cable turns into a single jack on the other end that I plug into the line-in port on the back of my PC. So, with that setup, I probably wouldn't notice much of a difference? I'd probably plug that in to a single line-in port on the back of a sound card, right?

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[kfgjn43]

Whoops. I meant line-out. It goes into the green line-out port right now.

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[tf1]

That's so. You are still using analogue audio: 3.5mm jack line output from the PC to stereo RCA phono jacks on the amplifier.

So with that setup, you don't have the facility to decode a digital stream and thus need audio processing on your computer.

Consider updating to a 5.1 AV amp for your next big upgrade! When you select your Audio card, make sure it has a digital output for the future.


Regards: Terry

 

[kfgjn43]

There is an S/PDIF port on the back of the case. I hooked up these older speakers a few years ago because I figured they'd do a better job than a few new smaller PC speakers. Should I replace them with speakers that accept S/PDIF? Sorry about the confusion. I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to audio issues.

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[tf1]

Potentially better.

Because the digital signal from the source (CD, DVD, etc) will be transferred directly to the audio system without any decoding on the computer, the signal/noise ratio will be as good as the original source, as will the bandwidth and dynamic range.

However, this won't be revealed unless the amplifier/speakers are good quality.

I feed the digital output to my AV amp which has a good 5.1 speakers. It does make a huge difference. I'm using my PC as a Blu-Ray Home Theatre using an HDMI connection to the AV amp. The HDMI cable carries both video and digital audio to the amp (using ATI graphics card).

I've not had any experience with any of the PC speaker systems with a digital input, but I would guess that they are a big step up from most PC speaker units.


Regards: Terry