I am about to buy a new system and am wondering about the sound card.The only "game" I regularily use is FS9 & I am very concerned about performance. My old system has onboard sound AC97 & the quality through my speaker system 2.1 has never been a problem.I have been told that onboard sound systems are a heavy system load but wonder if this is true with the simple sound in FS9.The basic question is whether with a mid range system it is worth allocating budget to a separate sound card or whether I am better having a better video card/ processor/ memory.I am looking at an Athlon 3500 (to get 939 pin) with 1Gb memory & am not yet sure of the graphics card.If a separate sound card is a good idea what do I need?

Really if you only play FS9 I would really suggest you save some money and stick with on board. The sound in FS 2004 is very dull by natural causes just choose low quality and you will be fine. You will still get a lot of noise ;) That way it don

there was a test on Tom's Hardware a while back. the sound that performed best (least drawn on system/highest frame rates) was the Nvidia onboard chip that comes with the N-Force 2 boards, obviously the best was no sound at all. http://www4.tomshardware.com/game/20030405/index.htmlthis is quite an eyeopener because i (and most others i think) presumed onboard sound was inferior. I have this sound chip and can vouch for the sound quality, although i only have an old Cambridge Soundworks 4 speaaker setup with sub woofer, so can't say how well the 5th and 6th sound channels work, but it sounds better than both my old SB Live and Santa Cruz cards aswell as giving me about 8% more frames per sec.

Soundstorm is the exception that confirms the rule ;). But generally the Audigy 2 show less CPU usage but it

If you read fairly recent review of say Abit AV8 motherboard on hardocp.com then they measure performance hit from the onboard audio and it was pretty substantial - close to 17-20%. Therefore I decided to go with Audigy 2 since I recall from some other review in the past this card has minimal impact on CPU performance (in single low digit of %).Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

I have read the Tom's Hardware review & it makes very interesting reading. I note the warning about not all boards using the full nVidia nForce2 chipset. I wonder of they are used in Athlon 64 boards.Michal JI think you have the same problem as I do. As I understand it the worst hit comes with EAX sound (whatever that is!) which I understand many of the latest games use for complex surround effects but which FS9 does not have & I can't see needs.I have a copy of PC Pro magazine October 2004 which tests sound cards & finds in "Unreal Tournament" that basic sound cards are, on the test system, around 40 or 50 frames/sec EAX on & EAX off whilst the best - the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro - is 54 and 58 in the same test. That is a 40 to 54 (35%) improvement for EAX sound and 50 to 58 (16%) for non EAX!!!!! Unfortunately they did not include the nVidia nForce2 chip in the test.Is there really the hit found in "Unreal Tournament" with the very simple sound that comes with FS9? If there is then a sound card is a bargain way to gain the sort of performance increase & we should be discussing sound cards more than the very marginal differences in processors etc for which we pay so much & which get such attention.

. My old system has onboard sound AC97 & the quality through my speaker system 2.1 has never been a problem.>>>Interesting....I have the onboard AC97 sound, and it's great everywhere except fs9...:(With fs9, I get artifacts, even with the quality on low, and I've also tried varying the dx9 hardware settings. No real change...With the ATC, it often stuttered and had an echo effect due to the artifacts. Sometimes a heavy ground roll sound would cause "static" on the sound. I since tried a cheap soundblaster 128 PCI card. It's actually not quite as good as the ac97 in one aspect, as it does a lousy DOS emulation, which I happen to need. "I miss my old ISA soundblaster...:("But, it's performance in fs9 is much cleaner. No static, no artifacts.Sometimes the ATC will stutter a bit, but only while on a disk load or something. Sometimes it does it if I'm changing a view direction at the exact time the ATC starts to chatter. Normally, it sounds fine. So anyway, in my case, the add on card is the best as far as fs9 is concerned. But the ac97 will run my old nascar game, where the SB 128 won't. Neither one will play my puter geetar amp fx box, etc, , which requires *true* DOS SB support...I don't like either one as well as my old ISA SB awe 32, but this new MB won't take ISA cards...:P In this box, I'm running both sound cards, and I pick which one at startup. Thats a hassle, but I don't really have a choice. Does anyone know if any of the old SB PCI cards supported DOS?? Maybe one of the first PCI versions? I could find one on e-bay if thats the case. MK

I think it may be a 'myth' that FS9 is somehow an 'easy' audio environment. Based on many posts from the past it appears the evidence points in the opposite direction.Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

Wow, I never thought about the onboard sound could be affecting my system that much. I'm running the Asus A8V with 8:1 onboard audio. I wonder how much more of a performance I would get by going to a sound card?Right now I run 1280x1024 @32bit with AA on at 2x and I get around 30-50fps in the air.HuggsKittiex:)~ This system is: AMD 64 3500+ 939 ASUS A8V Deluxe with wifi GCorsair TwinX1024 3200 XL Pro 2 36gig W.D. Raptor drives in Raid256 X800 ProWindow XP homeAntec True power 550wThermaltake Premier V5000A case

"I think it may be a 'myth' that FS9 is somehow an 'easy' audio environment. Based on many posts from the past it appears the evidence points in the opposite direction."Well said, Michael... and we won't even bring up the subject of USB devices (wrong thread).Greg