Building a new computer to sound card or not?

Do you do lots of gaming, particularly FPS, and want the very best positional audio you can get, sacrificing musical quality slightly?  Grab an Auzentech Forte.

Do you prefer musical quality?  Grab the Hiface.

Soundcards have long since lost their relevance with gaming, especially the x-fi since no new games use EAX anymore and hardly any bother with its replacement EFX. Onboard is good enough for gaming.

Also theres no FPS increase anymore as there is no hardware acceleration in vista or 7, so the x-fi processor sits idle. Not that it matters much anyway with todays core i7's etc.

I'd put in a sound card with Toslink or SPDIF out then run the music to a "good" DAC. That way you don't need to use a jittery USB port.

Just my 2 cents.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MacedonianHero 

I'd put in a sound card with Toslink or SPDIF out then run the music to a "good" DAC. That way you don't need to use a jittery USB port.

 

Just my 2 cents.

Wouldn't most new mobo's have a spdif out, like my Gigagbyte GA-EP45-DS3r?  If the mobo has spdif or toslink out, does he still need a soundcard (especially if running to amp/dac)?

Quote:

Originally Posted by MacedonianHero 

I'd put in a sound card with Toslink or SPDIF out then run the music to a "good" DAC. That way you don't need to use a jittery USB port.

 

Just my 2 cents.

its what i do ..

If you believe digital is digital is digital, SPDIF from an onboard source should be just as good as from a sound card.

Also, USB isn't bad as a rule.  SPDIF is just commonly implemented better, and USB is commonly implemented worse.  There are (many) exceptions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Weaves 

Wouldn't most new mobo's have a spdif out, like my Gigagbyte GA-EP45-DS3r?  If the mobo has spdif or toslink out, does he still need a soundcard (especially if running to amp/dac)?

If you already have SPDIF or Toslink out, then you're good. I would then look at investing in a stand alone DAC. (No sound card is necessary)

Cheers.

I gamed through a Zero DAC for quite a while and the directional audio support was still fine. I think you can skip the card.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Weaves 

Wouldn't most new mobo's have a spdif out, like my Gigagbyte GA-EP45-DS3r?  If the mobo has spdif or toslink out, does he still need a soundcard (especially if running to amp/dac)?

Most mobos have onboard S/pdif output, but integrated cards tend to resample everything to 48Khz...chanches are that it'll go unnoticed...but bitperfect digital output should theoretically be better.
ost 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Meliboeus 

Most mobos have onboard S/pdif output, but integrated cards tend to resample everything to 48Khz...chanches are that it'll go unnoticed...but bitperfect digital output should theoretically be better.
ost 

This isn't true on modern motherboards, but this is the second time I've seen it come up lately.  From all the motherboards I've tried in the last 3 years, which had SPDIF outputs, they could all change the freq. to 44.1.  My old Gateway computer was proof that even the mid/low end onboard solutions support 44.1, as I was feeding a DAC 44.1 from the onboard Conextant SmartAudio.  My netbook also outputs 44.1 to the headphone jack.