Sound card for 2.1 speakers

[oldsoldier]

I am building a system and have sound card questions. I don't have room or desire for 5.1 surround, planning on klipsch promedia 2.1 or logitech z2200 speakers. Mobo is Asus
p4c800e Dlx w. 3.0 p4.

My questions are:
How good is onboard sound?
Soundblaster family differences in real world?
Performance difference sound card vs. onboard?

Comments/ideas appreciated

 

[Ionizer86]

The P4 chipset boards probably have a C-Media chip or something similar. I'd say get the system first and listen to the sound to see how much you like/dislike it. You could then get a sound card if you feel you need one. Of course, the gaming performance won't be as good. CPU usage may be over 10% instead of being just a small few percent with an Audigy family card.

 

[mrgoblin]

Onboard sound is rough. There are a few good ones like soundstorm and envy but the best bet is to go for a sound card. Advantages are of course better sound and you dont take a hit on fps in games. That said there are really 2 sound cards that stand out. For price/performance go for the voyetra turtle beach santa cruz. I own one and they are very nice. Another one and its high end is audigy 2 zs. Its about 40 more and really is nice for games with eax and 24 bit even though 24 bit is kinda redundant. That said the audigy has had driver problems in the past and the turtle beach from my experience had a slight edge over the audigy in price performance and such. Audigy is more for surround setups. That said id go with the tbsc.

 

[oldsoldier]

Thanks for the comments.

Forgot to add question about Santa Cruz, and it got answered anyway. I would prefer to buy as much of the system at the same time as possible, while I can a get a good system now and later will hear "you just spent xxxx and want more?"

 

[jdogg707]

I have heard a lot of comments about the Turtle Beach being better for music, but when I got one I found that I liked my audigy much better. The driver/software for the Audigy seemed to be better than the Turtle Beach and the sound quality, especially in music and games, seemed to be much richer with the Audigy. I would go with something like the audigy LS or Audigy 2 for what you're going to be doing, unless you are going with a 7.1 Surround setup, the ZS isn't worth the price premium.