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What is a sound card?

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  • Gaming
  • Sound Blaster
  • Systems
  • Sound Cards
Last response: in Systems
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May 18, 2014 9:04:59 AM

I am wondering what a sound card is and in what way can it make a difference to my gaming?

I am considering the CREATIVE Sound Blaster Z any ideas?

More about : sound card

a c 206 4 Gaming
May 18, 2014 9:12:58 AM

in a pc all it is a chipset that decodes zeror and ones into analog sound. the older sound blasters and games had a set irq and memory range. (quake/doom). with newer rigs try the onboard sound chipset for a bit. the after market sound cards to some people do sound better.
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a b 4 Gaming
May 18, 2014 9:15:53 AM

MrAlaweey98 said:
I am wondering what a sound card is and in what way can it make a difference to my gaming?

I am considering the CREATIVE Sound Blaster Z any ideas?


It'll only make a difference if you have either a really bad motherboard, or really good speakers.
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a b 4 Gaming
May 18, 2014 9:17:44 AM

It will depend on your motherboard, and what speakers you have to determine whether or not it's worth your while to buy a dedicated sound card. Most newer motherboards onboard sound is good enough. The only time a dedicated sound card is really worth it is if you have high end speakers that can make use of the extra quality.
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a b 4 Gaming
May 18, 2014 9:25:30 AM

A sound card can generally reproduce a better sound quality if you have it hooked up to analog headphones or speakers. On the other hand if you're outputting sound via your video card's HDMI or display port then a sound card won't benefit you. While it's true that dedicated sound cards can offload some of the processing for sound effects from the CPU, the performance penalty on modern CPUs for using onboard audio is so small as to be insignificant. Creative use to be a big thing because of EAX as there were many games that support it. Starting with Windows Vista and DX10 though Microsoft stopped supporting the addition of audio extensions such as EAX in DirectSound. EAX is supported through OpenAL extensions, but has still lost support since DX10.
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