Sound Card...Is it worth it?

[Guest bekfreak]

Okay, with motherboards being just as good as your average soundcard these days I was thinking of getting an Omega Striker on this new system of mine. While I'm sure it won't help performance with FSX with taking some of the load off the mobo but I hear that's not the point. In the eight years I've had this current computer that old Audigy 2 got plenty of use..movies, listening to mp3s before ye'ol ipod took over that job, audio streams from local radio stations, other games, and it pretty much made my old stereo moot to the point I sold the thing. I just wonder if it's worth the $80 to even bother?

[Guest Nick_N]

Sound cards today do not take any load off the system.. that is old news from years ago.Unless you need the hardware support for audio hardware encoding you do not need to buy a soundcard

[Guest bekfreak]

Sound cards today do not take any load off the system.. that is old news from years ago.Unless you need the hardware support for audio hardware encoding you do not need to buy a soundcard

Right, if I was looking to play mostly FPS then I could see the need there as well. Though I've had my share of fun with this card. Nothing beats tossing in a DVD when the flu has you running ragged with a set of surround speakers but like you said no load off the system.

[Guest Alphahawk3]

Right, if I was looking to play mostly FPS then I could see the need there as well. Though I've had my share of fun with this card. Nothing beats tossing in a DVD when the flu has you running ragged with a set of surround speakers but like you said no load off the system.

Nick knows his computing so I am just going to tell you my experience with the on-board sound with the Asus P6T Deluxe. I have Sound Max on-board 5.1. It may be me or it may be something wrong with the driver....I have the latest....I don't know. All I know is I have on old SB Live 24 in my PC now. The on-board and me just do not get along with FSX....as I said I don't know why. I wish it worked for me because I hear sounds from aircraft out of it that the SB Live 24 misses. It has great sound but I have never been able to get it to not give me problems with FSX. I still switch back and forth hoping something might have fixed itslef...but not yet. I would say just try and see. If it does not work out you can go and buy a sound card. Regards

[flilotUK 0]

I bought an ASUS Xonar DX soundcard last year, along with a decent set of Creative speakers, because I also watch DVDs and play music on my PC.The better sound quality and fuller bass has also made FSX more immersive for me - now I can hear little sounds I didnt hear before with the motherboard audio.

[Guest Nick_N]

Right, if I was looking to play mostly FPS then I could see the need there as well. Though I've had my share of fun with this card. Nothing beats tossing in a DVD when the flu has you running ragged with a set of surround speakers but like you said no load off the system.

I have never had any problem with onboard 8.1 driving my external Dolby system off the optical out or off of the analog out. The Dolby system rocks the room with crystal clear audio and rich bassI have in the past installed an expensive sound card in a system specifically for hardware audio encoding support however the audio quality was no different than the motherboard 8.1 solution. Could be the Dolby system at work however when applying audio to disk media and using it in other systems I found no difference in the audio quality between the sound card and the motherboard 8.1. Other than the fact that the sound card would encode much much faster than the motherboard and was also able to deal with multitrack encoding easier, the output was exactly the same. I have always been able to play CD's, MP3.. with FSX running with onboard and with no issues at all. I do know there have been reports out for over a year now relating to audio pops and crackle in FSX which are directly related to latency issues with the video adapter. Gigabyte had fixed this on one of their boards with a BIOS update and Asus seems to be hit and miss with the issue. I have not to this date received a board which displayed the problem so I have never had the opportunity to look at it directly. Most who RMA the board for a complete replacement find that is the best solution

[Guest Alphahawk3]

I have never had any problem with onboard 8.1 driving my external Dolby system off the optical out or off of the analog out. The Dolby system rocks the room with crystal clear audio and rich bassI have in the past installed an expensive sound card in a system specifically for hardware audio encoding support however the audio quality was no different than the motherboard 8.1 solution. Could be the Dolby system at work however when applying audio to disk media and using it in other systems I found no difference in the audio quality between the sound card and the motherboard 8.1. Other than the fact that the sound card would encode much much faster than the motherboard and was also able to deal with multitrack encoding easier, the output was exactly the same. I have always been able to play CD's, MP3.. with FSX running with onboard and with no issues at all. I do know there have been reports out for over a year now relating to audio pops and crackle in FSX which are directly related to latency issues with the video adapter. Gigabyte had fixed this on one of their boards with a BIOS update and Asus seems to be hit and miss with the issue. I have not to this date received a board which displayed the problem so I have never had the opportunity to look at it directly. Most who RMA the board for a complete replacement find that is the best solution

I am not a code guy but I suspect as much with this problem I am having. The sound and video are somehow related and I don't think it has anything to do with a CPU cycle. It is a sometimes thing....but it annoys the crap out of me on an approach...or take off for that matter. It might have been here from day one as I do not usually use ATC...just go to an airport and start flying or do a GPS direct with ILS approach. It just bugs the s.....t out of me. What really ticks me off is on my old P4 I never had a single stutter doing an approach...it was smooth as silk.....could not fly a lot of places...or some planes, but boy where I did fly was sure smooth. By the way Nick I read about you doing the jet on the deck at Mach 1 and I took a Bombardier 45 up to see what mine would look like as I thought it would be blurrie...I went up to 5000 ASL and dove down to 1000 and leveled off.....was doing 650 indicated airspeed and the textures were sharp and crisp flying by...I could not believe it...of course autogen was popping up like missiles but it just makes me wonder what an 965 can do.

[Guest bekfreak]

I am not a code guy but I suspect as much with this problem I am having. The sound and video are somehow related and I don't think it has anything to do with a CPU cycle. It is a sometimes thing....but it annoys the crap out of me on an approach...or take off for that matter. It might have been here from day one as I do not usually use ATC...just go to an airport and start flying or do a GPS direct with ILS approach. It just bugs the s.....t out of me. What really ticks me off is on my old P4 I never had a single stutter doing an approach...it was smooth as silk.....could not fly a lot of places...or some planes, but boy where I did fly was sure smooth. By the way Nick I read about you doing the jet on the deck at Mach 1 and I took a Bombardier 45 up to see what mine would look like as I thought it would be blurrie...I went up to 5000 ASL and dove down to 1000 and leveled off.....was doing 650 indicated airspeed and the textures were sharp and crisp flying by...I could not believe it...of course autogen was popping up like missiles but it just makes me wonder what an 965 can do.

I wonder if FSX benifits from the EAX technology like some other games do. For $2000 I'd like to use the computer for more than FS. It's something that would be nice to have but definately not something I need. :) There's some game titles that have my interests Warhammer 40k, Dawn of Fantasy, the Star Craft 2 series, and a few other nice new PC games that are coming out. Food for thought until I finally can put my order in.