hmmmmm .. with 99.9% of the MOBOs in the market offering built in sound cards some with high quality sound cards, what does this say to the independent sound card makers such as Creative. Right now we see only creative. no one is competing with them. And when last the last time creative launched its new sound card?

I think creative is too good with it's sound card. And probably business strategies. Their main aim is to Gamers and Home users in Malaysia. I heard there is a few companies in the US competing with it which is not that popular. I know there are a few sounds cards(not creative) which is specially for musical instruments like keyboards, and guitars sold in Malaysia, just not that popular.

Few years back, do you remember when sonic gear first came out? They produces sound cards also, when 5.1 speakers are hot that time.

It is quite dead, really. http://xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/displa...0201141449.html

HOHOHO.. didn't aware of that.. i was refering creative comparing with others. i think it's the gamer's demand in sound quality. For me, i still prefer adding on a sound card. Better quality always... =)

we still have razer ones. LOL...

yeah...Sound card are dead. The only sound card u ever need is Realtek HD 7.1 Azalia whatever....with VISTA new OpenAL, creative's dominant days are over. Creative has previously tar pau their GPU and CD-ROM business. Looks like next in line will be the sound card business...

There'll still be hardware acceleration under OpenAL, but with all the multicore CPU's coming, who the heck cares for that. The impact is quite insignificant.
Moving sound processing to CPU cores is the new trend, XBOX360 and PS3 already doing this, there's no more dedicated soundchip already coz CPUs more than powerful enuff with so many cores.

Still, people who has a high-end speakers/amp/receivers connected to their PC might want a dedicated sound card. Average joe RM300 speaker will probably won't hear any difference between built-in and SB sound.

And personally...i hate EAX...it's so fakish DSP processing. No flames pleez.

This post has been edited by Matrix: Feb 7 2007, 05:33 PM

Oh no!!I'm currently using a creative SC rite now...don't say like that laaa...

Your X-fi will worth nothing much very soon...better sell it off quick!!!

I just an external DAC. Fin! And superior SQ too!

still got those enthusiast will support them mar...

ENTHUASIAST=WATERFISH

Theres always a niche market, just that ppl who enjoy sound have to pay a bit more, I myself used to built-in sound for a couple years, recently i *found* an old SB Live lying in my storeroom, plug it into my new rig and whoa, it really sounds much better...

This post has been edited by vey99: Feb 7 2007, 09:08 PM

i think soon sound cards will become like what floppy is now.

just thinking, did onboard sound is par or better the add on one....

Graphic cards would probably end up with the same fate as soundcards someday.

Wont come anytime soon unless Nvidia ended like ATI.

I don't want a bigger motherboard, please. Plus, graphic cards are expensive (their processing skills are different compared to a processor). You don't want to add an extra 400 just to upgrade your gc right. Plus, 3 fans on your motherboard doesn't look nice.

It's all in the eye of the beholder...

For starter, when it comes to sound, and in the context of a PC, we only thought about how much it's gonna relieve the CPU for the sake of a few extra FPS, positioning like from 5.1 to a ridiculous 7.1, EAX 2.0 for the non-Creative and EAX4 HD for the X-Fi clan...

Who cares about the quality? I do...

In fact, I never bother to buy any Creative soundcard since I bought a 'generic' one; a Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1 that uses 2 CRYSTAL Sound Chip... If u ask me how good it is, better than onboard audio AC97, slightly better than a Live! in certain areas. Price? RM250.

Somehow, how good the quality of sound in a PC would go? The level of audiophile quality? It'll never reach that stage and by saying it would, we would only draw flamethrowers by those who've invested a gazillion ringgit on audiophile equipment.

Frankly, I'm no soundcard enthusiast but I'll never took a glance at all on the onboard sound because it's simply crappy. I've tried my ears on Azalia, nothing impressive. If I'm to plug a big can over it, there aren't even enough juice to drive it, but a soundcard might stand a better chance. Personally, I favour ENVY24HT chip by VIA. But then again, I've just read a review on a new HD Audio card with the soundchip came from an unfamous company released by 2 company, one is designed in Korea, another is in USA.

No matter what, I believe I would continue to stick with the purchase of PCI soundcard or PCI-E if they finally wished to release one. And the next target would be ONKYO WAVIO SE-200PCI !!!!

actually can feel the difference, at least for my Creative Inspire 4100 speaker that is. about RM 225, that time was like 3 - 4 years ago. and i can feel the difference when i use onboard vs using Live DE 5.1

isn't it using onboard sound will lag slighly on gaming?
i think my audigy still good compare to onboard sound..
clearer sound and good boosting on subwoofer..

using onboard sound will cause significant hit in games' fps and the sound produce not that good.

change from onboard to dedicated sc and i fell worth it but now vista kill creative

gimme a soundcard anytime over onboard..

another thing is dat mobo design nowdays soundcard unfriendly..chuck in 2 vga with big coolers n u're out of space

Guys,u should hear sounds in games when u use an external soundcard...
They will blow u off!!!I've been using onboard soundcard since I'm a kid n now using an X-Fi, gaming is much much better!!!I'm serious...

But i think my onboard RealTek HD 7.1 is better than my SB Live 5.1...LOL.

Dude,that's SB LIVE...try a newer one....

why you compare your brand new onboard with a 57 YEARS OLD sound card?

This post has been edited by Sichiri: Feb 8 2007, 05:44 PM

that means on-board audio pwns the once-a-king-SB Live

Not all soundcards are better just because they're newer . My advice has always been to use a cheap soundcard as a transport and relay it out to some external DAC, and since most modern processors have more than enough power, i'm not too worried. Plus quality also depends very much on your speakers, if you're using Sonicgears and want to throw in an EMU, Lynx 1 or BB Eval board, you've gotta be kidding if you think those speakers could take advantage of that added detail.

I agree bro...

Im using x-fi rite now and compared to my cmedia 7.1, the x-fi wins hands down.The sound of the card is just so crisp..and gaming is like being in the game.

are you sure? seriously, losing 10 fps from an already 70fps isn't a problem.

that also i highly doubt using onboard sound would make you lose that much.

seriously, when we say onboard sound - it's generalizing it already. so i advise all of you, that if you wish to say your PCI card sound better onboard - at least specify the chipset.

in my case, i used the onboard sound on NF7-S and NV8 from ABIT. in fact i used NV8 onboard sound for NFS:MW game and thought it was well. my SB Live DE 5.1 was in storage some where cos i thought it was spoiled in some way. some how i manage to make it come alive again and wow i just realized how much detail i was missing - and that was also my DE 5.1

But guys, with an onboard SC, u can't crank the sound quality to Ultra High...take example in BF2...

The thing is that a sound card can cost the same or even more than a mainboard price. So im sure that the sound card will still have its benefits no matter what.

Back during the days of Pentium II, I would always purchase an external sound card and disable my onboard sound. But nowadays onboard sound has come a long way. Also;

- I've run out of PCI slots to put my sound card. 4 slots; 1 NIC, 1 lighting, 1 for GC's massive heatsink fan.
- It is my humble opinion that an external sound card would suck up more power from the PSU.
- The games I play don't seem very affected by sound issues. I'm on a Pentium 4 anyways, so that limits the kinds of games I can play.

But I won't deny that an external sound card will improve things, provided you have the space and power to accomodate. It's just that I know I probably won't prioritise sound cards as much as I did in the olde days.

"In the game" experience is more about buying the biggest baddest monitor u can get. Then add the biggest baddest graphics card u can get to power that big bad monitor. That's the main thing that gets u "in the game". U shud c how FPS games look on a 30" monitor. The hand n the gun is life size! In games like Oblivion too, the hands r life sized. Now, that's what u call "in the game". There's no point having a rm1000 soundcard when all u c is a puny lil 17 or 19" monitor.

Anyway, what's the point of investing in PC sound? MP3s sound like crap. N if u play CDs then it's so much better to invest in proper Hi-Fi.

Not 100 percent true, i use my PC as my reference listening rig and to be honest with you it's alot more awesome than alot of expensive CD players out there Plus not everyone uses MP3s, i use ALAC and FLAC

yeah. which is why i'm sticking to my SB Live DE 5.1 despite having gone through at least 6 changes in GC and 3 changes in monitor..............oh wait, nowadays i use onboard cos my mobo went for RMA and i've not installed the PCI soundcard :

It might be sooner than you thought. Intel has already hinted that the excess cores that come with its processors can render graphic cards redundant.

i play counter strike with my speaker turn off sometimes

and how does that help? other than reducing noise......

i am using a hercules digifire 7.1 card. but this people never update the driver. I think other than creative, sound card producers dont update their drivers. I am planning to the the older Revolution 5.1/7.1 M-Audio cards but the drivers are from 2003 for the 7.1 card and 2004 for the 5.1 card

You'll be suprised. The drivers of my Prodigy LT (V1.16 or something) which is quite old and they work with VISTA!!!!!

SB live 5.1 is already out of the VISTA support list.

---

Added on February 9, 2007, 6:59 amBecause i have that card and not a X-Fi?? Just sold it off recently anyway. I think the music with Realtek is really better, games are at least on par. And i don't think there's any significant frame drops with a multi-core cpu running onboard sound...it's more than powerful enuff.

---

Added on February 9, 2007, 7:01 amYep. Valve of Half Life fame has already confirm this idea. Just read it in a mag yesterday. They said multi core cpu's will spell the death of the GPU as it's much easier to scale performance using CPUs.

I think when we have 16-core CPUs, the GPUs will probably be in trouble....

---

Added on February 9, 2007, 7:03 amMaybe 3 - 4 years ago onboard sound not so good and ur CPU not so powerful??

This post has been edited by Matrix: Feb 9 2007, 07:03 AM

Haha, no way. GPUs are not going to disappear anytime soon, if ever. By the time 16 core CPUs are available (in a couple of years, latest), GPUs will have advanced too. In fact, if you compare GPU and CPU performance increases over the last few years, i think you will see that the latter has improved faster. Thing is, GPUs are purpose built for massively parallel processing, while CPUs are still largely dependent on single thread performance. They are attacking different problems. GPUs also have a lot of specialized hardware for texture filtering and other fixed function operations which would take forever for a CPU to do. I don't think anyone in their right mind would say multi-core CPUs = death of GPUs. That's just daft.

Back to the soundcard issue, just as with GPUs, if you want something good or at least better than average, you always have to go with a discreet solution. And right now if you listen to music and game, x-fi is the only way to go. CPUs alone won't cut it. EAX really does work well on new creative cards.

This post has been edited by ikanayam: Feb 9 2007, 07:48 AM

Whatever you guys said, sound card is here to stay. Same like floppy, even though not many people use it (and been announced dead), there are some people still use it. And GPU will dead? Give me a break! No CPU can render as fast as a graphics card, no matter how fast and how great this integrated graphics or sound solution is, I still buy discrete sound and graphics card. Period

Putting everything onto motherboard isn't a good choice no matter how good the audio codec is. This is because a motherboard is like an electrical thunderstorm, it have lots of interference that can distort audio and makes cracking sound. And I don't want to buy a overcrowded motherboard with everything integrates on it

EDIT: My friend at college have Klipsch Promedia GMX 2.1 speaker and using onboard sound (don't know which one), and to my surprise it sound like crap! I dare to say if make a comparison between me and him which speaker will do the best, my speaker will do better in terms of voice and clarity (SB Live! 5.1 + Logitech X-230) . Yes that speaker (Klipsch) have a great bass (makes my head dizzy) but it sounded like it lacks something without a sound card, lacks depth

This proves (at least to me) that a great speaker is useless without a great sound card, and my friend agrees with me, he said that my speaker sound so much better even though the RM400+ price gap

This post has been edited by Najmods: Feb 9 2007, 08:53 AM

^ really ? I know relatively, a PCI SC beat the onboard cards but some MOBO are embeding 'high quality' onboard SC. And we know that GPU is going to stay because we see more and more players entering the market. Previously we see only Asus, Saphire, N-Vidia, ATI, MSI, Winfast, Gigabyte then we saw Powercolor, Galaxy, colourful and few other with chinese character on the box. This is a sign that GPU is going strong. Looking at SC, i see only creative. Check the price lists at Low Yat - we see only Creative cards. with only 3-4 shops selling 1-3 cards of other brand. Is this not the sign that SC is dying ?

True enough, just because its not flourishing doesn't mean its sure death for the SC. Creative still wants to have market presence, just that probably the advancements will not be so great compared to other components.

Unless everyone start listening a true 3D sound system. Otherwise u hardly see a significant different.

an onboard sound card is good enough to meet the basic 2.1 speaker setup. And these onboard sound card will get better on the 2.1 setup in the future.

hm... even built in SC are getting DTS certification... Creative and Razer are on the border of extinction... and are falling to the extintion side...

On the contrary, if it's not flourishing and been stagnant for so long, it's definitely dying.

(1) Creative sales figures tells it all. The biggest boy in the business with sales dropping like flies...what else is there to say.

(2) No active competition. This simply means other companies don't see this as a potential market. Otherwise, you think so many people out there dunno how to do business when there's demand? The truth is, no demand=no market=minimum supplier.

(3) Some on-board sound has proven to beat even discrete sound card. SoundStorm is a fine example of this. Too bad it was dropped due to various issue by Nvidia. Anyway, this can be heard in the original XBOX. IMO, the sound in my XBOX with real-time Dolby Digital encoding toast all the PC games i ever heard.

Bottom line: The sound card business is a sunset industry. There'll probably still be market for the music professional, but mass market is a thing of the past.

---

Added on February 9, 2007, 2:22 pmI didn't said that. Valve did. Who am i to comment?

As for EAX, i don't think it'll flourish anymore under the control of OpenAL. MS will not let anyone else have their own ways.

---

Added on February 9, 2007, 2:39 pmWe're not comparing integrated graphic-ler...we're talking future multi-core CPUs.

There's a lot of rumours like this going on around about "interference". Frankly, i've never heard any crackle with on-board sound. What thunderstorm??

The only crackle and hiss i heard is on my Prodigy LT card..due to some dodgy drivers. Luckily, with the drivers fixed, it sounds great.

IMO, the bottomline is something like this:
1) There's no doubt at this point, on-board sound will most likely unable to challenge an expensive discrete card for sound quality...PROVIDED you have the speakers to go with it. Personally, I would only listen to music using my Prodigy LT on my HT system coz it's really rocks compared to my old SB Live 5.1 or onboard sound. There will be SOME difference if use on lower end speakers with onboard sound and a high-end card, but to most people, this will be hardly noticeable to justify a sound card purchase.

2) However, most people with average expectation and average speakers and average ears will find most on-board sound quality nowadays more than acceptable. This is the main reason why the business is dying. The mass market does not see spending another RM400 Sound card as critical as upgrading their GPU or CPU or RAM.

3) With markets getting lesser and lesser, there's simply no way Creative can keep
pumping money into R&D to fund a dying market and one which improvement is ever difficult to be seen (or heard in this case) by consumers. In the end, it'll be only a small market meant for hardcore audiophile/musicians.

4) With technology improving and such, on board sound will get better and better at rock bottom price. The trend is already moving sound processing to multi-core CPUs as shown by Xbox360 and PS3 where there's no dedicated sound chip. MS is also moving in this direction, and with MS pushing the wind of change, it is an unstoppable force.

my 2 cents.

This post has been edited by Matrix: Feb 9 2007, 02:43 PM

haha, i think ive read that mag. it was pc gamerl. got alyx picture shooting at vga. haha.

this must be a jedi
i think the design of mobo has limited the growth of soundcard. abit and asus has their own, special built-in sound module. DFI boasts the karajan audio.IMO, the best way to make money for soundcard is to make sure that mobo no longer comes with built in audio except those m-ATX. make soundcard business like graphics card business. (like the old days)

This post has been edited by Skylinestar: Feb 9 2007, 06:36 PM

What you basically mean is with multi core CPU, so we don't need a graphics card to render the scene anymore? Don't make me laugh, no CPU can render as fast as a graphics card, period. Graphics development is far too fast compared to CPU. By the time CPU have 16 cores, I bet a graphics card have more than a thousand ALU's, more than a terabyte per second of memory bandwidth.

No matter how powerful the CPU is, theres a lot of disadvantages compared to discrete graphics card like memory bandwidth, look at current CPU vs GPU, CPU only have around 1.2GHz the fastest RAM with 128-bit memory bus while GPU have more than 2GHz of speeds with 256-bit memory bus (R580), and the latest 8800GTX have 384-bit while the upcoming R600 is rumored to have 512-bit memory bus. And to makes matter worse, current high end card is bottlenecked by the CPU, no matter how fast it can be!

About the sound, you just an average joe, you don't know any distortion or any anomalies on the sound itself between onboard and discrete sound card output. I don't blame you for that, it really depends on people, some people just fine with onboard sound and I don't

FYI i'm still using recent boards and the SB Live DE 5.1 still kicks those onboard sound.

My striker onboard sound card still canrt beat my Audigy 4 card in terms of sound quality.. couple with 5.1 setup, its really make a differents so i think onboard sc quality still carnt beat aftermarket sound card.

Creative is working on a "hack" to enable hardware sound acceleration on Vista for their cards via OpenAL. Looks like hardware sound acceleration is not dead yet.

FYI,

Creative got new series in the X-fi series, most notably, Extreme Gamer and Extreme Audio.

http://www.creative.com/products/welcome.asp?category=209&

I think the they're are meant for budget market. If it's cheap enuff ( < RM200), should be worth a shot.

Anyone see these cards here yet???

This post has been edited by Matrix: Feb 11 2007, 05:51 AM

I am going to get a X-Fi Sound card myself! Not becoz i want to support the SC industry just tat i want to enjoy greater sound effect!

No matter how good the MOBO SC are they are still no match for the X-fi one (dunno after 3-5 years later).

It is true that the market now have more and more ppl shifting over to MOBO Sound Card but there are still some ppl who want better quality, Creative is aiming on this market, instead of producing those lower end SC (below 200) they are now going for greater and better one.

Due to the price of X-fi currently, not much ppl will go for it (just sound onli mah why paid so much). But those that want A-class quality will most likely get them. It is more towards quality then quantity to Creative now, and the price of the cards also earn more than selling those cheap SC (below RM100)!

I guess u are not very good at reading. U r rite. I know nuts about graphics. I said the guys at Valve said that(about multicore futures to replace GPU). U know Valve? As in Half Life 2? I think they know graphics much more than u do. Look whos laughing now. The article is in a PC game mag recently...can't remember which one though.

You really don't read what people wrote don'tcha?? You haven't read why i only listen music with my HTPC rig?? I don't even wanna bother to explain as i already mention in my 2cents.

btw, got myself an X-Fi at un-resistable price coz my sister is a dealer and got contacts.... ...if it's better than my Prodigy, i'm gonna put it in my HTPC rig.

Drool people...drool....

This post has been edited by Matrix: Feb 12 2007, 04:48 PM

We still need add-in PCI sound card ler...

If your onboard sound chipset spoil, what will you do? Throw away your motherboard and buy a new one?

Better buy a new PCI sound card lor

This post has been edited by Tag_F1: Feb 27 2007, 12:21 PM

i think realtek 7.1 no as gud as SB live.. csz when u listen music and movie u will feel the diff.. SB produce more more clearly sound..

probably creative is 2 powerful 4 SC competition...at least this monopoly aint that bad compare with tmnutz

no need DE even Live 5.1 kicks onboard sound anytime.

True, mega/giga/tera/petaflops aren't graphic quality.

you might never know what is going to happen tomorrow.....
unless you're working in AMD/Intel

anyway, i am in a dilemma.... I am using ATP3 and GIGA 965P-DS3
shud i get a sound card below rm100? or the onboard is better?

If you're itching to spend a hundred bucks (i am hehe) grab a Chaintech AV710 soundacrd from daijobu's bulk... the sound is pretty good for stereo (not 5.1) as it uses HT24 chip...

This post has been edited by vey99: Feb 27 2007, 10:01 PM

lol my friend has a Gigabyte DS-3

and a Creative Sound card, dunno wat model but rather expensive

the Creative destroys the on-board sound card

built in sound cards normally are never as good as dedicated ones

well, it also depends on your speakers / amp

im using expensive amp but on board sound card

so no0b

Many normal users who use onboard sound will say why need a soundcard ?

You'll correct yourself again when you plug in a sound card with the same pair of speakers, you'll definitely hear the difference. I've used plain old AC97 before and I just cant stand the crackling sound and hissing noise when there is a cpu spike on soft music, crankling the volume up will hear alot of cracklers and hisses.

With an external soundcard like Creative (SB Live! onwards) you'll definitely hear a clearer sound with better SNR ratio, crispier sound and lower noise signals compare to onboard ones.

If you're an audiophile or music enthusiasts, you'll definitely want a soundcard than onboard solution but if you're a gamer, sound quality doesn't really matter as all you need is multi-speaker output which onboard sound offers up to 7.1 nowadays.

I personally uses Creative X-Fi, the sound quality difference comparing to Audigy 4 is Huge I dare to say, due to its 24-bit Crystalizer. If you ask me to get an Audigy 4 in favour of onboard solutions, save your penny I'll say

My 2 cents.

EDIT:



For your definition,
Onboard = High Quality

For my definition using your definition,
Onboard = High Quality
X-Fi = Very High Quality



This post has been edited by tanghm: Feb 28 2007, 05:36 PM

how much is a sound card, which can surpass onboard ones nowadays ?

rm 250 ? rm 300?

not many are so rich 2 do so

RM250 price Creative Sound Card is Good Enough, & pair good speakers... while EAX funtions enabled they sound so real in gamings...

U mean what model of sound card by Creatif? Audigy?

Audigy 4 i refering to...

Same here. My own system compare:
Sempron 2500+ with Live 5.1DE
PIII-800MHz with SB Live!
AMD X2 3800+ with on-board sound from Asus M2N-E.

Conslusion:
Sounds missing, choppy and unclear (lots of noise) from on-board sound VS those with SBLive even with a dual-core.

Verdict:
Use on-board sound if your ears can't detect any improvement.

Soundcard = faster gaming. It will free your processor from having to process the sound data, thus giving you more FPS ingame.
So soundcard is a must if ur a gamer.
Also interesting to note that Vista supports multiple soundcard now, and you can assign each soundcard for different programs, IE: onboard for music and external for gaming

They better be quick. I am getting pissed off with the size and power consumption of the GC these days. But I got one question, does that mean that we can never upgrade our gc in the future?

It means we upgrade our processor faster than ever.

yes faster gaming but with the processor and GPU being so powerful, you won't even feel it when the resources allocated to onboard sound.

soundcard is NOT a must even if you're a gamer. you can't generalize gamers like that. i'm a gamer myself, and i'm currently using onboard as my SB Live doesn't seem to be working....again.

for me, i get a soundcard regardless whether i'm gaming or not because i find that the output is nicer (richer la) but if you're a gamer who doesn't care about the details of what you hear and already have a powerful system. it doesn't matter.

in fact the argument of "using PCI soundcard would give you extra framerates" has been used for more than a decade. in the past, yes. during that time computers aren't that fact and onboard does use up resource but this isn't so these days when computing power is way way way more powerful than before while audio systems on computer are better than before.



btw SB Live is not EXTERNAL soundcard. it's ADD-ON soundcard or PCI soundcard. EXTERNAL soundcard would be like the EXTIGY.

Discrete sound card are generally better than onboard. But there are not much people would ask for X-Fi sound card, most of them would settle with Audigy or SBLive! These years the sound card market it has been quiet.

Currently the only way I can think of to live up the sound card revolution is voice recognition, things such as off loading sound processing to Sound card processor. but sound recognition is far from practical.

of course in terms of quality, independant sound card is the best. According to a magazine I read, a separate sound card can play 2 times or more synthesized sound in a game, compare to a onboard solution. So when it comes to games, certainly a dedicated card would do better.

While if you use PC just to surf, downloading and listen to lossy mp3, then better stick with onboard just fine.

Yeah i agree, SB is a really good card.I'm currently using philips aurilium external sc...quite good also..I dun wanna spend too much on a sc...

so boring. long time no keng keng sound card come out liao.

sound card good or bad, is dependable on different sound card ,different person who use, different speaker that you are using!...
currently using x-fi, still feel the best, coz got people buying audiotrak 7.1 but lack with bass effect!...
last time sound card live player, having a soft sound but lack in sound volume!
some time different sound card driver like , windows driver, manufacturer driver or even 3rd part driver like kx-project driver also having a differencing in sound quality
but in reality speaking.... listen to music, if you are using a better headphone, would have a different feeling compare to a normal speaker.....

This post has been edited by cha: Mar 7 2007, 10:33 PM

Yah, playing games with headphone is especially noticeably different with a EAX sound card. You can hear very sharp sound effects. Playing games with speakers doesn't sound that much different (EAX and non-EAX), unless you have all the correct 5.1 positioning in place, which i think most people playing games in front of their PC don't have.

sound card business wont die in years to come, just because you or couple of your friends dont use it, doesnt mean no one does.. there are millions of people who work with audio/sound and require excellent quality, i dont know any motherboards which can offer high quality with its builtin SC.. not to mention millions of enthusiast, myself included, who enjoys perfect sound..
of course the market is not as big like for motherboards, but its certainly not small and not dying

The numbers certainly don't agree with your claim. Just look at the 3rd post of this thread. And this:

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Look at the audio devices section. The majority are using integrated sound chips. More than 1 million users polled for that, so i think it's a pretty accurate survey of the gaming scene at least, which would have a higher number of people using discrete soundcards compared to the global average.

It is small, and creative sales figures show that it might be dying as well. Enthusiasts only represent a tiny percentage of the market. Mainstream is what sells. And mainstream seems obviously content with built in solutions.

This post has been edited by ikanayam: Mar 8 2007, 12:48 PM

could be quite accurate for valve fans.. and 1 million users is a small amount at global market

strange as it may seem - yes, it can help. it heightens your visual senses becoz you minus out the audio distractions. you know those so easy to "die" games? you're reloaded to the same "save" point, the music/sound effects are the same and it's your 15th attempt now? turning off the sound may just get you through to the next stage.

as for sound card being dead? maybe not so soon. on board video did not kill off the gc market did it? these "add-on" cards mean flexibility and choice.

i would be just as happy to keep my SB Live! now i'm (still) on SB audigy with the onboard audio disabled. my ears say that SB card sounds better than the onboards.



This post has been edited by beelzebob13: Mar 8 2007, 01:19 PM

Yes, but for a poll, >1 million responses is a LOT. You obviously can't get a response from every person with a PC on the planet. Most polls have many orders of magnitude lower response rates than that.

Also, like i said, that discrete sound card figure on the poll is likely distorted, because gamers would be more likely to spend on a soundcard than an average user. So the global percentage of discrete sound cards users should be MUCH lower than that.

I wonder why creative didn't go into integrating their chips on motherboards. That way, they could gain back the market share eventhough that might meant killing their own sound card market. At least they will gain a lot of market share and their high end soundcard can still sell.

anyone called me?

they are complaining bout u. talking behind your back...

As on board sound become better and much better with each coming years, most normal user will use on board rather than dedicated sound card. How many home user really need to add sd when they get then on board? Most of home user doesn't need the clarity of sound in their daily live. So, I think, in time sound card will lose the battle.

Why pay additional RM200-300 just to hear sound while you already have that with the on board?

Anyway, this is only for normal/average home user. I believe most Low Yat user, which is not an average user have sound card in their system including me.

so it's time for creative make onboard sound and beat other challengers

On board sound cards aren't that good, sometimes i noticed frame rate difference between my on board and the creative audigy 2 card while playing games. It can really boost the frame rate even after 7.1 sound is enabled, about the sound quality creative has bass / treble as well as the equalizer if you silap adjust it , possibly hancur la the speakers, pretty powerful soundcard.

Well..then I am on the other side of the wall..2x Creative card (1x from E-MU studios of Creative) and another external DAC plus an onboard audio Avance AC97. <--- geek!