Has anybody looked at the performance hit (% of CPU utilized) of using an onboard sound card like in Soyo Dragon or Asus a7v-266-e in game play versus running a SB live 5.1. There is one good effect of on-board sound card and lan cards you do not have to use any PCI slots better stability. This is especially true of Dragon plus.

There should be articles on this subject, try searching in your favorite search engine.

CPU usage would be higher with onboard sound, but the Live has one of the highest CPU usages of any card on the market.

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i ahve a on-board sound chip & the performance is not rearly reduced !, My backard bell (i know ,,, i bot belled)1999 system consists of... 400mhz celeron , 64mb pc100 , nvidia riva tnt2 (32mb) , dail-up internet & a 11MB's of intel r810-L on-board graphics chip (DVMT) (but this is dissabeld coz of the nvidia , but i can use it for secondayr monitor support) if you do a search for onboard sound chips in this websit then i am sure that you will find something that will help. As for the performance with the onboard sound chip is NOT A LOT my chip has to controll the graphics (not any more) the modem & the sound & the performance is not noticeable effected !. even in online gameing!.
I also have a voodoo tv fm card in my system & the sound chip workes perfectley with the card.
The only two things that i have againsed haveing it onboard chip is that #1: the frequincey isnt that good (meaning that the "high" sound's like a simbol isnt that effective/clear (but this depends on your speaker's, mine is clear enough) #2:check that you can dissable the onboard chip if you decide yo use an PCI sound card, otherwise the onboard chip will be useing the CPU thus lowering performance.
Otherwise they are a good idear for people who are on a budget..

Hope thats helped you !


linux has got to be better !