Is a sound card recommended?

[namelessonez]

Hey folks!

My rig specs are in my signature. My onboard sound card is what I have for sound, but I'm looking for a li'l bit more! For eg, when I play Crysis 1 and Warhead, the volume is at full but the sound is very evry soft! It's only crysis that this happened with. All other games its ok.

So here's what I did. I unplugged the headphone jack from the mobo and plugged it into my Dell Monitor (in order to use the HD Audio of my GPU) and it worked! The sound was loud and better.

I've been considering getting a dedicated sound card....specifically the Asus Xonar DX.....as I'm under the constant belief that the sound card would not only remove the load from the cpu (now gpu), but will give that extra kick!

So, my simple question: will the addition of a sound card do the trick without my having to upgrade my headphones? I'm not looking at upgrading the headphones as of now.

Thanks again!

 

[gamerk316]

as I'm under the constant belief that the sound card would not only remove the load from the cpu (now gpu), but will give that extra kick!

The load removed from the CPU is minimal. Don't even consider a soundcard as a way to increase FPS in game.

So, my simple question: will the addition of a sound card do the trick without my having to upgrade my headphones? I'm not looking at upgrading the headphones as of now.

Depends on the headphones your using. If your using a $10 set of headphones, you probably won't notice much of a difference.

 

[namelessonez]

Thanks for that. The headphones I'm using are a pair of Razer Carcharias. In light of that, would it be better? I'm not looking at a sound card for an increase in FPS, but for an increase in the sound quality.

 

[gamerk316]

Well, not the best headset, but above average quality, so you should have a noticable improvement with the DX.

 

[gamerk316]

Stop it Dadiggle; onboard audio is PERFECTLY CAPABLE of "true" surround audio via OpenAL. The only issues are with legacy games using the Directsound API, which in some circumstances are limited to just 2.0, but otherwise, onboard audio has no issues getting surround audio.

 

[namelessonez]

Best answer selected by namelessonez.