Leave onboard sound or install old card?

[vuronev]

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-150-045&depa=1

I bought this mobo to build a quality but low priced system for my sis and her husband to do work and play games on (he likes battlefield and games like that).

I'm setting it up with a 2500+ and 2x256 pc3200 ram (kingston value) an nvidia 5900xt and a WD 8mb cache 80gb drive.

Anyhow, my question is should I just leave them with the onboard sound, or install my old soundblaster live! value pci card. They arn't audiophiles, probably will only be hooked up to some dinky dual speakers. But if one setup is better than the other for them, sound wise, and overall system performancewise, I'll go in that direction.

So which will be better for them? leaving the onboard sound, or installing the old sb live value?

 

[Tittles]

how old is the sound card? If they aren't big in to sound and they r gonna be using dinky dual speakers then the onboard should be fine...a computer i built for my friend had onboard sound and had crappy song vaio speakers and they sounded just fine when playin deer hunter and listenin to movies and music.

 

[vuronev]

It's an old sound blaster live! value pci card, probably from around 1998/99.

I was just wondering if it would give them better sound relative to the onboard sound.

 

[Lee]

It's probably better to leave the onboard sound.

If you are going to use the pc for playing very loud music, watching tv, making porn movies, then I would suggest changing the onboard sound to off in the bios (though mine also enables sound blaster with it) and trying the card.

I did try this myself, with a good sound card I got, didn't notice any change in sound quality, nor level of sound, also the sound kept crashing even with latest drivers enabled.

Should slow down system I think if you add to another slot.

If you want to fill the pci slot, get a system dust and heat exhaust, they are cheap and cool the system nicely

 

[LeeJend]

The sound blaster live will probably sound better. My SB Live sounds better thanmost of the on board sound I've heard.

If the old SB live dies you can always revert to onbaord.

 

[emeritus]

I would install the SB Live! card. You will have less overhead, unless the onboard sound has its own processor, like the NForce-2 boards.