Onboard Card

NO, it's NEVER been true. And YES, it's often been true.

OK, at no time has every company used simple codecs, there have always been a few using chips. For example, I've had several board with Creative Soundblaster and ESS soundchips onboard, the same hardware you'd find on a soundcard.

On the other hand MOST boards DO use simple codecs.

Now, a codec is a simple device that splits the digital sound into separate analog channels. Even the SB Live has codecs on it. But the SB Live also has an extremely weak Digital Signal Processor on it, which takes the sound PROCESSING load of the CPU to some degree. It's only slightly lower load than forcing the CPU to process the sound, but the quality is a little better.

Many nForce2 chipset boards (and their derivatives) have the MCP-T southbridge, which contains an even better digital signal processor called the nForce APU (Audio Procession Unit). But I don't think your board has it, therefor you don't get the moderate overhead with wizbang features.

Which is why I recommend the Abit NF7-S over similar boards.

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Your motherboard has the MCP, not the MCP-T. The SB Live would offer marginally lower overhead because it has it's own digital signal processor. The MCP-T has a better DSP, but you don't have the -T, so you don't have the DSP.

The newer codecs and drivers offer pleanty of features, so I probably wouldn't bother with the SB Live, but you COULD get SLIGHTLY better system performance using that rather than the DSP-less onboard audio.

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