[mike2h]

has far as the sound quality goes the only thing that matters is how it actually 'sounds' and from any given generation of sound cards vs the then current onboard the mid to high end sound cards always sound better than the onboard solutions.
onboard sound is an added feature that makes them $$ - they can charge way more for that feature than what they pay. personally i wished they had vers of the high end mb's that didnt have onboard sound on them. i mean how many peeps that can afford good gaming systems use the onboard sound. in fact id say the vast majority of peeps that play games, watch movies, listen to music on a regular basis have an add-on sound card.

and very nice comp!! gz.

[Judas]

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX

You can believe what you want. I never said the onboards were bad, they just do not sound as good. If you want to talk yourself into "believing" you have good quality audio that can surpass anything, Go ahead. Others have much better and it is not inaudible differences nor unstable cards.

I'm not talking myself into "beleiving".... i've trial and errored this with a number of people that have the ear for it. I was meerly pointing out that the orginal statement wasn't totally accurate.

In Vista hardware accleration is not a "moot" point. Only for Directsound. OpenAL still performs hardware acclerations just the same as it always did and direct sound games can be patched to OpenAL so again full hardware accleration in Vista.
I prefer straight sound quality to harware acceleration if I had to choose.

Sorry yes, at the time i wasn't thinking of OpenAL..... while becoming common it's still not.... probably not even near close to 50% in use in games and such.

You don't need to buy a $400 card to get better audio then ANY current onboard. Umm, lets see, the Xonar DX is one of the cheapest cards you can get right now and is sub $80 and would smash if not obliterate any onboard audio for sound quality.

A yes, the Xonar DX.... I'm not sure it would come close to smashing anything, i played with one.....

Question is, have you sat down and played with the top end Realtek? Really?

Onboard is getting better but is still not up to par with the current cards. If you want to compare a current cuting edge onboard to a card that is what; 3-5 years old then maybe, you may be getter close but will still lose out to features and overall sound quality.

Thing is, i don't have to compare it to older generation sound cards.... i can compare it todays cards... what's the point of comparing to dated cards... it's already being a worthwile competitor to todays cards. They are rather just as feature rich as the competeing cards, i mean you may end up with a few more inputs or nice tools, perhaps bundled software the the majority never have any use for to begin with. On the nice selling points of realtek alone is the fact that you can multistream audio, essentially being 2 independant audio devices which have very nice advantages. I mean i could go on for awhile about the specifics compared to others.

As I said, if you like your onboard, then enjoy but please don't ever think your onboard soundchip is the end all of audio even at a budget price because you are sadly mistaken. Can we get back to the X58 now?

A remember, i meerly mentioned that i decided on my gigabyte boards with the added weight of it having the realtek audio.... You then brought up the subtopic.

And you'd be surprised how many highend machines come with no sound cards at all... and use onboard audio. There are people with quad crossfire and triple sli, with the top end overclocked machines... yet have no sound card..... it's really not that uncommon to see such a thing.

[CDsDontBurn]

look guys, we're not debating how awesome onboard audio is over a stand-alone sound solution is or vice versa. this thread is about IamLakota and his new x58 rig. if you guys want to continue that debate on the performance of different audio controllers/solutions, then please do so in another thread.

the thing that initially sparked this whole debacle was that with 3-way SLI or tripple x-fire, you couldn't install any other kind of device if the MoBo didn't allow for it. A good example of this would the the 780i chipset MoBo. As you can see, it only has one pci-e 1x slot and 2 PCI slots. So, if you wanted to add in any other kind of PCI or PCI-E device and are running 3-way SLI, you couldn't do that.

[ROBSCIX]

Yes, already said back to the X58.....I see your point but you may be able to use for a Xonar DX which is half-height and PCI-E 1X or the New Auzen X-fi Forte which is also a halfy and PCI-E X1. I guess it depends on your Mobo and which GFX cards you own. When I build my new X58 I am thinking of going SLI but I will have to save room for my audio cards. That is my personal preference though...

[RIV@NVX]

Originally Posted by ROBSCIX

Yes, already said back to the X58.....I see your point but you may be able to use for a Xonar DX which is half-height and PCI-E 1X or the New Auzen X-fi Forte which is also a halfy and PCI-E X1. I guess it depends on your Mobo and which GFX cards you own. When I build my new X58 I am thinking of going SLI but I will have to save room for my audio cards. That is my personal preference though...

Let me just add that I will support you any time you recommend a great non-Creative card. However, Creative's card are just not worth the hype. I would take good onboard souncard over it anytime. The difference is inaudible, and for the price of most X-Fi cards you can get better speakers which will make a lot more difference.
And don't get me wrong - X-Fi is an awesome chip. If Creative opened DSP resources it has to VSTi host, it would put some companies out of business within no time. However, Creative doesn't do what's right.

[Necrosis]

Originally Posted by IamLakota

Specs are as follows
intel i7 920 most bang for the buck
6gigs of ram
3 VelociRaptors 1 standalone 2 in raid O
X-Fi Titanium pcie ya know the little slot,..lol
2 Nvidia GTX 260's SLI
and the mobo I finialy went with was eVGA's X58 version
just waiting for the mobo to come in everythimng else is sitting and waiting.
Normaly I'd be real impatient but work has me staying real busy and I'm thankful for that.

Lakota do you have it setup yet? I'm interested to read your impressions.

[ROBSCIX]

Originally Posted by RIV@NVX

Let me just add that I will support you any time you recommend a great non-Creative card. However, Creative's card are just not worth the hype. I would take good onboard souncard over it anytime. The difference is inaudible, and for the price of most X-Fi cards you can get better speakers which will make a lot more difference.
And don't get me wrong - X-Fi is an awesome chip. If Creative opened DSP resources it has to VSTi host, it would put some companies out of business within no time. However, Creative doesn't do what's right.

I don't think I recommended any Creative branded cards in this thread and usually don't unless the person is very low on cash and wants hardware effects. I recommended the Auzentech X-fi Forte' which is vastly different and recommended that because of the low profile and PCI-E X1. Auzen uses good quality parts and designs their cards for sound quality. I don't think CL cards are worth the hype either they use very cheap components and have overall low qulaity sound compared to what is available out there if you know what to buy. Most of the guys I know that even still own a CL card have them highly modified or use them in dual card sonfiguration with the Velbac software I helped develop.

I guess if any difference are inaudible or not from any given card or onboard to any other depends greatly on the quality of your playback gear. Back to the X58....