Do I even need a soundcard?

[sgt bombulous]

I recently bought this motherboard, and should be installing it soon. The one thing I've been thinking about is not even bothering with installing my Soundblaster Audigy Sound card. My thoughts are as follows:

- I don't use my PC to listen to music, and I rarely have the audio turned up very loud on it
- Less hardware and less driver support make for a more stable system
- A $170 motherboard should have decent audio

So unless ASUS has really crappy driver support for their integrated sound, can should just forgo the sound card?

 

[das_stig]

http://www.legitreviews.com/news/5977/

Should be perfectly acceptable for listening to music and playing games.

VIA have come along way with creating decent support chipsets.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

Yup, the 8-channel on-board audio on that motherboard is more than sufficient. I wouldn't let a Creative product near one of my systems.

 

[sgt bombulous]

Do you guys use audio cards? Also, one other place I asked this question they said I should use a sound card for gaming since the audio would consume CPU real-estate. Since audio requires so little processing, I can't see how this would be an issue. Also, I will be using an i5 750 CPU.

Cheers!

 

[shortstuff_mt]

That argument isn't really valid with modern systems. Like you said, how much can it really help.

No, I don't run a sound card and I don't think I ever will. On-board is pretty good now and it'll just keep getting better.