Sound Blaster Live! Value (5yr old) vs. EVGA 750i onboard sound

[shogen]

I only started looking into good sound cards because I recently purchased Turtle Beach HPA2 5.1 headset.
I am debating whether or not to use the 5 or 6 year old SB Live! Value that came with Dell Dimension 8200 or onboard sound on the EVGA 750i FTW that I purchased recently.

People say that onboard sound nowadays are very decent, but I haven't seen any concrete data to back that up. Unlike graphics cards, there is not much of benchmark results available, so it's difficult to decide.

If anyone has knowledge about this choice, I would appreciate if you could help me out.

Thanks.

 

[Aintry]

If you want numbers, you might look for spec sheets for both your Live! card and your onboard chip. Go to the respective company websites and see if there are spec sheets you can download, then do a comparison based on the numerical data.

You could also download spec sheets for cards that you're thinking of purchasing.

 

[bc4]

simple answer is give both a try and use the one you like better. Just make sure you delete the old drivers completely before switching.

I prefer having a sound card but if you have a strong system or are not pushing it to extremes the onboard will suffice. Also, using something 5 years old might not support certain codec's.

I've never seen a direct comparison on sound cards, just lame reviews of one product at a time and that is always biased to the reviewer's ears.