Debate: Soundcard vs onboard

[z3r07w0]

Just wondering if it makes a difference having a seprate sound card or just using the onboard sound provided. Keep in mind my mobo offers up to 8.1. Its a quad core mobo. I find that i can have the surround sound up but need to tweak to get the foreground sound up. Your suggestions and ideas would be appreciated.

[Archangelus]

Since I'm only using headphones, I've haven't felt the need to go with a separate soundcard. If you are actually using surround sound, there may be some benefit from either a performance (reducing the work actually done by your CPU/mobo) or a better ability to produce spatial sound.

My 2 cents, stick w/ the on-board unless you see a really good deal.

-Arch

[Maskif]

Obviously onboard is going to suck if you want to play FLAC or some other lossless audio codec. My recommendation is that you stick with onboard unless you have a really nice speaker system and love listening to really clear music.

[Yazule]

onboard uses your pc ram vs card has its own, just a tweek for performance, if you listen to mp3 really dont matter on sound quality.