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Will I benifit from a sound card

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hey guys,

Just wanted to get some opinions on weather or not It would be worth my time and $$ to upgrade to a aftermarket soundcard.

Right now I'm just using my mobo sound (p7p55D-E LX) and have noticed when it was built that the sound was noticeably worse than my on board sound from my previous build which is 5 years old. I'd be using my computer for games/music/tv stream primarily on headphones (sennheiser 151s) Not the most high end headphones I know, but good quality sound from what I am reading. I'll also soon upgrade my current speakers to a good quality 2.1 system, i'd go 5.1 but my apartment is too small.

What bothers me the most about my current mobo sound is the tinny/twangy sound i'm getting. The headphones will be a Christmas gift from the wife so the 151s are not set in stone, It seems that every headset I read about has lots of good reviews and lots of bad reviews making it difficult to decide. Bottom line is I have $100 canadian to play with.

1. Would I notice a significant or decent improvement if I upgraded to an aftermarket sound card with current headphones and a new 2.1 spkr set?

2. If I use my pci-e 1x slot would my gpu pci-e slot at 16x drop down to 8x?





Thanks for whatever suggestions and opinion you give, I will take it all into consideration.

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zubba said:
hey guys,

Just wanted to get some opinions on weather or not It would be worth my time and $$ to upgrade to a aftermarket soundcard.

Right now I'm just using my mobo sound (p7p55D-E LX) and have noticed when it was built that the sound was noticeably worse than my on board sound from my previous build which is 5 years old. I'd be using my computer for games/music/tv stream primarily on headphones (sennheiser 151s) Not the most high end headphones I know, but good quality sound from what I am reading. I'll also soon upgrade my current speakers to a good quality 2.1 system, i'd go 5.1 but my apartment is too small.

What bothers me the most about my current mobo sound is the tinny/twangy sound i'm getting. The headphones will be a Christmas gift from the wife so the 151s are not set in stone, It seems that every headset I read about has lots of good reviews and lots of bad reviews making it difficult to decide. Bottom line is I have $100 canadian to play with.

1. Would I notice a significant or decent improvement if I upgraded to an aftermarket sound card with current headphones and a new 2.1 spkr set?

2. If I use my pci-e 1x slot would my gpu pci-e slot at 16x drop down to 8x?





Thanks for whatever suggestions and opinion you give, I will take it all into consideration.


my opinion is you only need one if you plan on having a nice sound system with your computer or to set up a surround sound system. in other words you would be wasting money because you can just get a logitech speakers and plug it into earphone jack and have good sound any way.

I don't understand how better speakers or headphones is going to fix the issue of my crappy onboard sound. won't better headphones/speakers just highlight how crappy mound onboard sound processor is?
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Sound cards still do matter. Not as much nowadays, but they still offer much superior sound processing. Just remember that anything USB will not use a dedicated soundcard.

And no, if you use a PCI-E 1x slot, you won't bottleneck the other slots.

Quote:
Did you install the latest sound driver?I hope you didnot tweak any sound setting eg.bass



This actually helped improve the sound a little bit! I'm suprised, I thought the windows drivers update would take care of updating this on original setup.

Thank you gamerk316 for answering my pci-e question. I was going to ask some questions about the headphones I was thinking of (sennheiser pc151) but I think i'll post in appropriate forum, I think I'm going to save money and pass on the sound card.

Thanks guys for the help.

Windows driver updates have always been on the fail side of quality and on the win side of stability.

Although if you're a person who actually cares about what sh t on your computer sounds like in its full glory, I would highly recommend a sound card.

If you're like me and think that Soundblaster 16 was good enough, then it's probably not worth upgrading sound card.

Also, the last 2 onboard sound chipsets I've had were problematic at best, I am considering getting a soundcard just so I can have better control over the situation.

So in conclusion, unless you a def, it it always at least slightly better to have a dedicated sound card.
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