Creative Labs has been the market leader in the sound card industry for almost two decades now, and with that kind of utter dominance comes what one would call "criminal disregard (bordering on harmful malevolence) for the needs of its customers".
If I seem bitter toward Creative Labs, it's because I am. In 1998, I purchased a Soundblaster Live! sound card, and after spending the entire ride back to my house dreaming about the aural bliss I was to experience, I opened the box, installed the card, and turned on my speakers. What happened next was like something out of a Clive Barker novel (or a Halloween-themed John Allison comic ). First my speakers issued forth the cries of a million damned souls, then, moments later, hungry swarms of bees poured from the subwoofer and enveloped most of my family. I lost a brother that day and my dog is still terrified of bass tones. To read the article I saw today on X-bit Labs was my sweet golden moment of revenge, and my brother's soul can finally know peace.
According to Valve's customer hardware survey (the largest automated hardware survey ever), gamers just don't use seperate, specific sound cards much anymore. While Creative Labs is still the leader in that field, only 15% of gamers polled actually use the cards. The rest use the audio hardware built into their motherboards. Personally, I haven't used a seperate sound card in years, and I don't believe I know anyone who does. It's roughly on par with the Ageia PhysX card in terms of utility at this point, and that's a fact that I email the President of Creative Labs on a daily basis (along with a picture of my dead brother).
Contest:
7:53 AM on 01.20.2007
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I wonder if the new next next gen graphics cards will be the same? inbuilt GPUs to faze out cards?
My first sound card purchase was a wonderful sound blaster audigy 2 pro, or something like that. I was so happy about the possibility of hearing high quality sounds, and actually being able to checkmark those boxes next to EAX and the like. It was fine...until the thing just stopped working shortly after the warranty expired. Now I'm back to my onboard and I'm A.OK. :-)
To date though, I have not heard a single on-board chip that actually sounds as good as the mb blurb claims. In games you'll rarely hear much of a difference though, since most of the sounds are very loud and constant. But if you listen to music which can go from very loud to very soft and whispery, you'll probably hear the noisy sound of the AC-97 (or whatever chip you have) as it has a very limited dynamic range.
But I guess Im a little anal when it comes to sounds... Hmm, this post was completely pointless, I had no real point to make - just an observation i suppose.
We were caused so many problems by this certain type of chip. Buy a soundcard. They cost < £20 and will stop games crashing and running like a bitch if developers don't take crappy onboard sound chips into account or miss the issue.
@ Arrested Developer - I hoped never to see the letters IRQ together again. In my old Win 95 PC i had the option of either Network card or Sound Card. Not both! Which made LAN games real fun!
that said, i dont use my onboard sound. i still use my ancient soundblaster live! value because my mp3s sound much, much better with it using kx drivers.
But, this isn't a computer enthusiast or hardware site... so I wouldnt expect too many ppl here to know too much about hardware.
Check this out... for a proper review Maximum PC. (They actually compared it to the inferior Intel HD audio)
And reffering to ANY computer experience in the 90's is pretty worthless... OMG i used to use brand X's 2800 modems, and they were soooo slow.... come on
I got x-fi, and am a happy customer
I do wish there were other choices than Creative for sound in games (I know there are others but they consistently use more cpu cycles/ lower framerates in benchmarks I've seen) because they have draconian policies about drivers and software they include on the install cd. Basically if you lose the CD you're boned. I don't know if they've changed it with the X-Fi, but on my live and then Audigy 2 you can't get any of the software of their website.
P.S. Quake 4 sounded absolutely wonderful with OpenAL. ;)
Ive never noticed stuttering issues using onboard sound, maybe the Asus chipsets are better?
I use a Hercules Fortissmo II, and I get hl2 stuttering.
I used to have a Live! value and later a Live! gamer, but I don't know what happened to either of those. When I build I generally just use onboard audio. Especillay on nv chipset mobos.
I try to justify a creative card as a good option if you study music, but it is not that much cheaper or better solution than semiprofesional stuff if you do recording. It has the advantage that doesn't take a more space since is inside of your computer, but aside of that i can't see the real advantages just yet.
Back to the games, i do think that those are a good choice if you want the real deal with the sound of games and you like those 4 fps extra.
Really though, Onboard sound seems to suck ass and I need my soundcard for upmixing to 5.1 seeing as I have my consoles' sound plugged into my soundcard. Sure, I've had problems with them before but who doesn't have problems with computers?
If you want to squeeze the most out of your rig, a separate card is a must.
On top of all that, it does sound better..
I absolutely hate onboard sound from both an aural and hardware perspective.
Aural - It sounds like shit. Seriously. Perhaps you aren't using top of the line speakers (which is understandable given how expensive they are. Buy Klipsch if you have too much money), but even with decent speakers there's a noticeable difference in quality.
Hardware - As many people have already noted, there's a slight performance hit and it's really worth the less than $20 you can get sound cards for on ebay if you're really hurting for cash.
Basically, the only reason I would use onboard sound nowadays is if I was stuck with cheap 2.0 / 2.1 speakers that come with just about every store-bought PC or if I was using cheap headphones. Since I own a decent pair of Sennheisers, however (quality headphones at a decent price), and have a cheap 5.1 system that works as well as any other so long as you don't crank up the volume (at which point it begins to crack), I couldn't imagine life without a sound card.
Tell you what, if someone finds me a driver for basic onboard sound that supports full 3D positioning management (check your old Live! drivers) and THX-like (doesn't have to be fully certified) sound capabilities without taking noticable memory/cycles away from other motherboard operations, I'll reneg on my position. Until then, I'm a hardwired sound card user and I'll keep my (3!) sound blaster cards. (I have sound cards in my Linux machine... Sound Blaster Live! for a $1 and fully supported. Why wouldn't you?)
(Top sentence was emboldened to draw attention to such a low post.)
- for the price of an x-fi, you can just buy a better cpu. especially now in the age of dual core cpus, offloading sound processing for better frames in games is a ridiculous reason to buy an expensive sound card
- if you really want to upgrade your sound, you're better off upgrading your crappy computer speakers or ghetto plantronics headphones. if you're already sporting those sennheiser 580s, then get a worthy soundcard like the emu 0404 http://www.emu.com/products/product.asp?category=610&subcategory=611&product=15185&nav=technicalSpecifications
When you really want to get into games (and yes, this is still an opinion and not fact), sound can make a world of difference.
You can always keep up with graphics, processors, etc. and have you system feel and look great. But would you watch a movie on your gaming system? That's a really important question.
People go to the theater for a reason and it's not always just the bigger screen. Take a movie like The Last Samurai. Not the best movie in the world, but entertaining and I happen to like it.
I've seen it three times in different theaters (because I saw it once and liked it enough to sit through it twice with other groups of friends). The first theater was so-so for the screen and the sound was tinny. The second theater had an amazing picture quality and the sound was decent. But it was the third time watching that really did it.
The third theater, which I now return to for summer blockbusters and the like, had the worst screen in terms of size. I mean, this thing was literally 3/4th the size of next one up... but the picture was clear and the seats were comfy enough. So why do I return? The sound quality was @#^#$% fantastic. It was like hearing the movie for the first time. Bass was butt-shaking, but not overamped. Midrandge was clear. And the high end not once sounded shrill. (And think of all the flute-like instruments in that movie that really go high. That's a good theater!)
Sound can make a world of difference when done right. Doom 3's an awful game with amazing environmental effects - sound included. Did you play through far enough to get to the spiders? When the spiders were introduced what happened?
Did your headphones/speakers go tika-tek-tik-tik-tik as they scittered along and you just keep walking? Or did you look up as the sound that is used to introduce them in the hallway slowly faded from the back and literally ran over your head because you took the time to setup your speakers right?
So... crap this long. I'll shutup now.
Buy a sound card and some decent speakers Nex! ^^
The above isn't actually directed at Nex. (His piece was satire.) However, it's fun to use him as a target.
The stuttering in HL2 was a memory/processor issue. It had very little if anything to do with the sound card. I might chalk it up to the fact that people who have extra cash to throw at a sound card usually buy top of the line processors, etc. Not me though. I'm an audiophile who throws a sound card in everything. (Whether it needs it or not. Have you seen my Linksys wireless router? ^^)
Onboard sound is fine if your system is just for office use, but for gaming? Jesus, spend the cash and get a card.
I'm all about dedicated hardware, though. Hoping to get a 3ware SATA RAID card soon. Mmm.
Integrated peripherals are for 1) noobs who know nothing, or 2) users who simply don't need the highest level of performance.
There are drivers up for my Audigy 2, at least, and I expect for all models of it. They don't include the fancy Creative software, but I just use ctpanel.exe to configure the options anyway. Take a look again; I remember the time you refer to, but I didn't need anything already installed to make this driver package work.
Normally, I don't worry about performance, but I've also had problems with on-board audio causing crackling and other buffering issues.