I'm having a computer built locally. I'm not nearly so interested in great sound as I am great video in FS9, so I don't want to put my money into a great sound card. My builder says to go with on-board sound (AMD 3500+ socket 939 mobo) and it will be pretty good. My main concern is that that might slow the system somewhat. Would a separate sound card be better for the system, aside from the better sound? If so, any recommendations for the best value in a sound card?Thanks,Rego

I think you should go with a seperate sound card. Believe it or not many folks who have on-board sound cards complained here that FS is the only game where they had experienced sound problems. I would go with basic Audigy 2 card, nothing fancy.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

Go with the onboard sound first. It's easy to add a soundcard later if you feel you need one. The NForce boards have pretty decent audio. Not much slower than a dedicated card. Only problem is that the quality of the analogue outputs is really abyssmal because all mobo manufacturers use the cheapest Codec they can find (Realtek).

Hi Rego;Just my personal experience but my Asus A7N8x board had onboardsound that would get progressively worse the longer I flew. As thesound quality deterioriated so would the performance of FS9. Put in a 29.95 sound card and no more probs.;-) DN

As you can see by my sig, I use both at the same time and they are both good options. Onboard sound is good and has minimal impact on overall performance. The only issue I have with it is, at least with the motherboards I've had in the past, that I can't have four speaker output AND microphone input (for VATSIM).My SBLive offers similar non-impacting performance, but allows me four speakers and microphone.The best of all worlds, for virtual online fliers at least, is onboard sound AND a sound card. This way I can have FS sound channeling out my 4 speaker setup and use an independent sound setup through a headset for voice comms using the onboard sound for mike and ATC audio, again with neglible performance hit.As has previously been suggested though, if you desire a more simple sound setup try onboard sound first, then buy a sound card if performance or sound stutters become an issue.Gary

I have o/b AC97 sound and heve never had any problem with either on this machine or my previous ( both of which I built).I have flown online for extended periods at times ( up to 18 hours) with no degradation in sound qualityAs said above try o/b sound first - if you have problems then add a seperate PCI card.DaveMSI KT6V-LSR(MS-7021)AMD Athlon XP3000.768 MB 333mhz DDRAMTi4200/128MB GPU.66.81 driversMaxtor 80GB HDD(7200rpm)Maxtor 40GB HDD(7200rpm)LG CDRWLG CDR 52Xo/b AC97 soundThermaltake 480W PSUWinXP- SP1.Direct X 9cSaitek Cyborg 3D Joystick

There are good and bad on-board sound chips. I have a SOYO Dragon+ with the CMedia CMI8738 chip and it very good. Others have some version of the AC97 chip emulation, of which, some are good and some are very bad.A second issue is IRQs. My SOYO Dragon uses IRQ11 for the on-board sound, on-board LAN NIC, and the graphics card. This is not a good situation, especially with graphics intensive applications. There will always be contention over control of the IRQ, i.e., graphics and sound stuttering. You cannot change the IRQs for on-board peripherals. You MAY be able to change IRQs with cards by moving the cards to different slots to better utilize separate IRQs.W. Sieffert

The nForce boards have excellent sound as long as you are not a hifi or home theatre enthusiast and use your PC for that purpose. In terms of performance they are faster (!!!) than most of the top-notch soundcards available today. For gaming it makes absolutely no sense to blow money for a soundcard unless you experience any problems.http://www17.tomshardware.com/game/2003040...r_games-03.htmlAlexEdited to add the link.