10,000 MIPS, for what?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
You don't have to spend $400!

A Turtle Beach Montego for $80 will sound hugely better than on-board sound. Bearing in mind of course you WILL need a decent pair of speakers. I have a the $80 card and a $150 set of Altec Lansing's with subwoofer. Tried to use on-board sound on everyone of my last 8 builds, and everytime my Turtle Beach card would literally demolish what came from the on-board sound. Big, big difference.
 
Yeahp. A $20 SB Live! Value would likely flatten onboard sound. TBH, folks using onboard sound are just trying to get by as cheap as possible, and that's one onboard sound is good for...and little else. Personally, for the cost of a movie and popcorn, I'd rather get a soundcard, but when you're spending $400 on a video card things can get tight for some...and thus, we have onboard sound. Again, its like onboard video, good enough to get by but not for the enthusiast.
 
The thing is.. unless you swap that card in and out every week you'll forget that your speakers can sound better and you'll get used to it.

At first when i pulled out the audigy and plugged in my 5.1 klipsch ultras into onboard, it sound a little muted.
After a week though i totally forgot about it and i could care less.

Its not that big of a difference.

Just my oppinion, you don't have to agree.
 
The thing is.. unless you swap that card in and out every week you'll forget that your speakers can sound better and you'll get used to it.

At first when i pulled out the audigy and plugged in my 5.1 klipsch ultras into onboard, it sound a little muted.
After a week though i totally forgot about it and i could care less.

Its not that big of a difference.

Just my oppinion, you don't have to agree.
Click to expand...

While I can understand your point, totally. I can not imagine forgetting how my rig sounds right now compared to what I've heard in the past. ...but you're totally right, the difference is not something you feel as much as with video. No one's gonna forget the visual difference between an nVidia TNT2 and a 7800GT anytime soon, but audio takes more effort to appreciate. I don't care. I don't want any Realtek or SoundMax onboard sound until they sound as good as at least, an Audigy 2. Call me misguided, call me arrogant.
 
Well I agree with you on that point. What one person says is great, the next might think is terrible. It's definetly what you are used to. After using the sound card for so many years, and suddenly trying the onboard sound I was really unimpressed and the sound card went right back in with every new build.
I am still using a ATI 700x Pro Video card, but heck my system does everything I need to do and rock solid, so for me it's fine.
 
Another thing to add to this. While you may buy the best graphics card money can buy its only the best for what 6 months ? My Audigy 1 lasted untill the Audigy 2 and I didnt see a need to upgrade (it was only slightly better) but now X-Fi is out and I got the Fatal1ty version and I love it :) I got to play Prey today and after playing for about half an hour I decided to check out the options. Long story short turned on Open AL and I had a noticable increase in my frame rate.
 
It's definetly what you are used to. After using the sound card for so many years, and suddenly trying the onboard sound I was really unimpressed and the sound card went right back in with every new build.
Click to expand...

So basically Ignorance is bliss in other words. :)
 
Not aimed at jkay69, aimed at every loser putting other things down before trying.

TOO many god dam idiots in here, dont flame what you dont have or cannot afford.

Try it dont like it return it in your 30days consumer rights. LOL.
 
I believe it is part of the Human Condition to put down, ridicule and deny anything that is not understood or appreciated.

Rather than trying something out and figuring out for themselves whether or not something is good, bad or even right for them, they prefer to openly put it down with likeminded opinion. How can you make an opinion of something without relevant experience with it?

I believe much of the hostility has been from the $300 for a sound card, admitedly expensive for a sound card, but the $85 option seems to have slipped by the wayside, the $300 sticking point seems to have clouded reasoning to the point of blindness.

If it is reasonable to pay $500 for a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) then why is it not reasonable to pay $300 for a APU (Audio Processing Unit)?

Would it still be unreasonable to pay $200? What about $85?

The plain fact is people don't mind paying crazy prices for GPU's because they feel that this means they don't have to spend as much on anything else. Funny as most people who spend big money on GPU's do this in the pursuit of the fastest rig running the best games with the best graphics for the best gaming experience...

Well an X-Fi, even an extreme music is an APU and as such offloads the Audio Processing from the CPU meaning that the entire system will benefit during gaming or any other audio related task. This is amplified the more bogged down the system gets.

My mates machine is an Athlon64 AM2 3800+ with 2GB Crucial DDR2 in dual channel mode and a Geforce 7900GTX 512MB and he laughed when I suggested he get a X-Fi. I don't need a sound card, my onboard sound is fine. A couple of days later he was asking me if my audio broke up, stuttered or corrupted when my machine was multitasking, i,e, Copying files, unraring, browsing the web while listening to music...I told him that since I got my X-Fi that never happens. He bought an X-Fi Extreme Music that day. Now he swears by X-Fi as he finds his music, hooked through his Hi-Fi as ever, sounds awesome and he says his games sound much better too, especially Battlefield 2.

The point is, he was happy with his onboard sound until it let him down, but after he had invested the measly $85 in the X-Fi he was blown away. The added bonus for him was that he could still use his onboard audio for VOIP.

JKay6969
 
I find that the HD audio codec (like the Realtek ALC880 built into my laptop) sounds significantly better than non-HD codecs. Although optical SPDIF isn't exclusive to HD codecs, it sure is nice to use with my home theater receiver.
Unfortunately I don't own a dedicated sound card and the only time I got to listen to one was on a rig whose owner knew nothing about sound. He had an Audigy 2 Platinum I think, but he had seriously messed with the equilizer (in a bad way) and had some pretty lousy headphones so I wasn't impressed. Sadly, after getting a new car my computer budget is basically $0 unless something were to die on me.

-mcg
 
I find that the HD audio codec (like the Realtek ALC880 built into my laptop) sounds significantly better than non-HD codecs. Although optical SPDIF isn't exclusive to HD codecs, it sure is nice to use with my home theater receiver.
Unfortunately I don't own a dedicated sound card and the only time I got to listen to one was on a rig whose owner knew nothing about sound. He had an Audigy 2 Platinum I think, but he had seriously messed with the equilizer (in a bad way) and had some pretty lousy headphones so I wasn't impressed. Sadly, after getting a new car my computer budget is basically $0 unless something were to die on me.

-mcg
Click to expand...

One of the things I've been personally wondering, and haven't tried, is how well ALC850 might sound straight digital to a quality DAC via TOSLink or Coax. ...it'd only be used for 2-channel audio. ...I've been wondering if it'd be in the same league, as say, an SB Live! My motherboard offers this option but I simply disregarded onboard sound because it was... onboard and I had an X-Fi available...but now that I have a descent external DAC I'm wondering if its even worth enabling it in the bios and infecting Windows with the drivers for it. Obviously, I've not done much research into it, just wondered. I just got 2 more X-Fi's from New Egg and plan to keep at least one, so this is not critical. Just generally curious.
 
If it is reasonable to pay $500 for a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) then why is it not reasonable to pay $300 for a APU (Audio Processing Unit)?
Click to expand...
Because a $500 GPU offers a larger benefit/performance increase than a $300 "APU" does. Seeing as you can get an X-Fi Xtreme Music from Newegg for $80 right now, a $300 "APU" has almost no improvement over the $80 version.
 
If it is reasonable to pay $500 for a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) then why is it not reasonable to pay $300 for a APU (Audio Processing Unit)?
Click to expand...
Because a $500 GPU offers a larger benefit/performance increase than a $300 "APU" does. Seeing as you can get an X-Fi Xtreme Music from Newegg for $80 right now, a $300 "APU" has almost no improvement over the $80 version.

Plus, the issue here is not the pricing scheme, but buying patterns. Why spend $300 on a sound card then $100 on speakers? Do you usually buy 109 octane for the $200 '83 Ford Taurus? The reasoning behind these actions seem rather unintelligible.
 
But an $80 X-Fi would give a nice increase in Audio Quality and a small gain in system performance so would be a good investment for a good PC IMHO.

I was not trying to make the point over the $300 X-Fi, I couldn't justify that on my budget, simply pointing out that even the $80 X-Fi would be worth the investment, not just for improved audio quality, but improved Audio realism in games, complementing the $500 GPU nicely...

JKay6969
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom