On board sound vs sound card

[Ben]

Want to know if its worth getting a sound card or stick with my on board one?

At the moment I am running a 7 in 1 AWA receiver, sub on the floor.

If I get a sound card will there be any difference in quality as it sounds pretty good at the moment.

I just don't want to spend $$$$ on a sound card if there is no difference in sound quality.

Running rig is;

Win7 HP 64 bit.
mobo, GA-Z68X-UD3R-B3.
Media, Cyberlink PowerDVD 11.


Ben.

Thanks.

Happy New Year.

[teknology9]

Happy New Year Ben.

Well I think the onboard sound is very good, so I think you could save your Aussie $'s... but the choice and decision is yours at the end of the day.

ATB

Teknology9

[Ben]

Thanks "T9"  was thinking of purchasing one but if if there is not much improvement I will leave it alone.

Now I think I will use my hard earned Aussie $$$s, & purchase a SSD instead, as  I hear the prices are falling due to limited supply of HDD's.

Was looking at the "OCZ RevoDrive 3 Xs 480GB" only problem is I am about $1,800 short of the $2,100 asking price. Ha,Ha.

I intend to look into the SSDs early in the year, there seems to be a lot of pro's & con's to them, besides brands, there is different drivers & some have issues on different systems, so I am putting this down to teething problems new technology etc, which I hope will be fixed by the time I purchase one plus should be cheaper & have more memory.

Ben.

PS. I don't know what the temp there is but its freaking 45c here & wont be cooling down till Thursday 27c.

[absic]

Hi there,

with modern motherboards the soundchips are usually very good and are ideal for gaming, watching video and general PC use, so there is really no need to spend extra on an add-in soundcard.

The only time you really need to consider a 3rd party soundcard is if you are looking to use the PC for something more specific. I use mine as the centre of a home recording system and on-board sound chips do not allow the necessary flexibility or speed for multi-track audio recording. So I use an M-Audio Delta 1010 soundcard with a breakout box that allows me to record 8 tracks simultaneously with very low latency.  

[Ben]

Thanks absic, I intend only to use it for normal day to day use, as you say if I was going to use it for a more specific purpose I would purchase a high end sound card.

Ben.

[teknology9]

Hi Ben,

Yes a SSD would be a good investment, I have a Crucial M4 128GB drive and the system boots very quickly even though it is connected to a SATA_2 port...I would like to get another one and RAID it for a pending new build.

With the temperature being that that high why not break open a few tinnies and sit back and enjoy the currant bun (sun) whilst deciding which SSD you are going to buy!!!

Teknology9

[Ben]

Thanks for the reply "T9"

I just downed 6 "Strongbows" (Sweet) hate beer.

As per SSD, have you heard of the brand "A_RAM" as they seem to be pretty cheap ($180 for 120GB) compared to the other brands.

Have Crucial M4 128GB over here for $240 is that a fair price?

Ben.

[Gloup_Gloup]

Hi Friends, 

I suppose this SSD is same ...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT128M4Solid-State-Drive2-128GB/dp/B004W2JKZI

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/pl/36-2716477/Hard-Drives/Crucial-m4-CT128M4SSD2-128GB-Compare-Prices

http://www.staticice.co.uk/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=crucial%20M4%20128&pos=5

Gloup_Gloup

[teknology9]

Hi Ben,

I have just done the sums.... Aus$ into £'s........ and it works out about £157.00 here in Blighty. Though a number of stores are selling the M4 SSD for

Scan - £152.00 including p&p

Aria - £159.97  - free delivery

So give or take a few pounds it seems reasonable.......but shop around and buy from shops that give you good customer service.

If you do decide to go for the M4 Crucial SSD...make sure it is the 0009 firmware version.

Teknology9

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

As with anything in general you get what you pay for and SSDs are no exception. All are fairly fast compared to the old magnetic drives but obviously some are much faster than others. At the top of the heap without going stupid are the PCIE based drives like the OCZ Revo x4 with speeds in excess of 1000 read and writes. Trouble is they don't come cheap so if you are watching the pennies you need to look atm a SATA based drive. They tend to come in different classes depending on the chips they are made from. The best are SLC, then MLC and so on ( Single Level, Multi Level ).

[Ben]

Thanks everyone for your input.

Have been looking at some SSD,s,  problem is I didn't realize there were so many brands, anyway it seems that the Crucial's win hands down as a lot of the other brands have either driver issues, high failure rates, to just not working up to their specifications.
So it looks like the Crucial is the way to go so that must be pretty crucial (sorry couldn't resist that one).

I was wondering if you could point me in some direction regards SSD,s as there is so much info on these & I want to cut the good from the bad.
IE, I read you can't format/defragment, & that after a while the read/write becomes limited etc.

So you guys are the best in this & perhaps can point me  in the right direction.

At the moment I am running a 1TB W/D drive (OS) & a spare 500GB W/D HDD both blue.

So would it be okay to put the OS in the SSD & should I keep both HDD,s or lose one of them & if so which one I mainly keep photo,s/music/video,s, plus other info on these drives, the 500 is used to keep backup material.

Ben.

Thanks.

[teknology9]

Hi Ben,

Have a look at these links here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/buy-ssd-recommendation-value,3088.html

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/264670-14-basics

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ssd-ntfs-compression,review-32330-11.html

Have a read through these links Ben....hope they help.

Teknology9

[Ben]

Thanks T9.

Have had a look at the links provided this helped me a lot.

I even discovered that SSD's were first manufactured by Storage Tek back in 1978 so the military & government plus other departments had them before the general public.

I wonder what other technology they have & how long it is before we the public get it.

Any way to get back on track I now have a better understanding of how these work plus their pros & cons.

I copied some of the data to keep for future reading. (hope I didn't break any copyright laws).

Thanks again you have been an enormous help.

Ben.

PS.

1 Gazillion Karma points to everyone who helped.

[teknology9]

Hi Ben,

You're welcome and I'm glad it helped.


ATB

Teknology9