Do you even need to buy a sound card these days?

It seems like most cards are integrated on the motherboard now.

no, a sound chip is intergrated onto a mobo not a sound card. they are very different. for one, in the case of a creative card, they have dedicated Audio processors whilst intergrated use the cpu.

IMO, onboard sound is the same as onboard gfx. if you want to do more than use your comp in an office you don't choose intergrated solutions.

No of course you don't need to if you don't care, but if you have nice speakers for listening to FLAC or APE (or even CBR320) on then you'll want to invest in something a bit proper.

If you are doing any kind of sound production then of course you need a dedicated solution with better quality parts (especially noticeable when recording - you need something with HQ mic-preamps, for example).

But most people are just content to have it sound acceptable and come at them from all directions, which is cool also.

@ StrangeStranger - it's nothing like integrated GFX. You can still listen to a high quality source with integrated sound, it's not going to 'drop any frames' like a cheap GPU would. It's also not nicking any of your system RAM.

well i have an old sb live De 5.1 and it is still some more capable than my intel p965 board. The sound quality and response is socres better .

This when u are comparing it with a 9-10 year old soundcard technolgy (sb live was released in 97-98 ) So one should not think comparing it to an audigy 2 or an X-FI

For everyday use, no. Most of the integrated sound these days is very good. However, sometimes it fails or is just a bit crappy, or you might need one for professional use, or you're a fusspot and demand the best.

I wouldn't spend money on one until I heard what was coming with the board.

on the point of tracking people down, it may be down to speakers but if i spec people in some games i always find it funny how when they hear footsteps they look around them but cannot determine where they are and i always do. especially in multiplayer games where a persons actions are not set it can give you an edge which FPS cannot.

oh and my point about iunergrated being like gfx is because it is. you do not buy a gfx card for FPS alone, you buy it for quality.

his original post saying a sound card being intergrated is wrong. hell, it is not even an actual processor. the comparison IMO is fine.

If you can't think of a reason why YOUR particular uses would need a separate sound card then you may not need one.

Many people like to cite paper specs for a card versus onboard but often the most significant difference is that with onboard sound there is too little board real-estate available and lesser quality and numbers of filters (subcircuits) are used, so the onboard sound is noisier. Amount of noise can vary from one system to the next, even one board to the next with SMT parts used having poor tolerances in most budget constrained board budgets.

Try the onboard sound, and if you find it acceptible you just saved a buck, unless you already had the other card and it was a good one, then you might as well use it as leave it sitting around collecting dust.

Gamers have been trained to see the difference between high and low resolution image by seeing the constant evolution through the years.

Most people are more visual-centric; they turn off soundtrack's to games, and often times have no problem muting the sound in a game where it isn't completely essential.

The comparison of onboard GFX to onboard audio is somewhat suiting. If your video card produced a crappy, fuzzy signal, with lots of noise in it, you'd probably scrap it right away for a better solution. This is essentially what onboard audio provides; a signal with lower definition and a poorer signal-to-noise ratio.

This is just the info I have been searching for...I got the eVGA 680i mobo, and was wondering whether to get a sound card or not. Im that hard core gamer, but have been out of it for 3yrs, back in the day when AA and DFLW and DF2 were hit was when I was hard core, and now Im getting back into it. Since then so many things have changed, I mean, crap, my last hi-end vid was a Radeon w/ 128mb which at the time was 399 and was the cream...

And now getting back into gaming, e6600, eVGA 680i mobo, eVGA 8800GTX, Corsair TWIN2x1024C5D, 2x WD Raptor 75GB in RAID 0, Plextor PX-755SA, CoolerMaster CM830, ThermalTake ToughPower 850w, and 6x Antec D-BB 120mm Fans, pusing Dell 3007 Monitor, the sound card was my only concern...

As far as the foot steps!! it makes a huge difference, back in the day, especially playing AA, sitting in the Insurgent Map building by the window, you hear the footstep outside, pull a nade, toss it out the window, and then get the WTF from the guy you killed, thats sound quality, just like the guy outside the wooden door, hearing him walk up, and blasting the M249 through the door...A huge difference was also going from true surround, Klipsch 5.1's to Digital Headphones, the headphones allowed for sooo much that wasnt apparent through regular surround, it was crazy, now I only game with headphones, and party with the surround...Now I gotta find the latest and greatest digital headphones...HAHA

Thanks for the info guys, if you have anything to add, Im all ears...