is a sound card necessary with this board?

[wasp]

asus a7n8x deluxe........i hear the on board sound is good, so was wondering

[ktkendall]

I would give the onboard sound a try and if it doesn't measure up to your liking then you can always put in a better sound card later. If your like me it will be fine, I'm not one that needs hefty sound, just as long as it works and sounds reasonably good is good enough for me, In fact I don't even turn my speakers on much of the time, but I'm not a big gamer or sound person.....

[TwoRails]

I know several people (gamers) that are more than happy with the onboard sound with that mobo.

[wasp]

yeah im actually building it for games,wwii online in particular which is a resource hog.........can ya hook up 4 speakers to the onboard? im not big on the sound myself but i figured since im building a pretty decent system i was gonna add 2 more speakers to the ceiling behind me

[TwoRails]

Yes, you can. I've never done it so I don't know the steps but it should be covered in the manual.

[Panama Red]

That motherboard lists some great sound specs on the Asus site. I just compared my P4P800Dx on board sound to your card and they are quite similar. I recently built my system and, as ktkendall suggests, went without a sound card to give the onboard a try first. I bought true 5.1 speakers in the Logitech Z640's and was amazed at how well this system sounds. Don't worry about the hook up of the speakers, it's pretty straight forward in the manuals. I think you are in for a pleasant surprise. Make sure you test it with a good DVD that uses surround sound and CRANK IT UP!!

[wasp]

cool , ty

[BARNEY]

Just remember to use digital out only if you want soundstorm. If you use anaog outs you get AC97 sound from the dac. Fortunately the A7N8X deluxe has the SPDIF mounted directly on the back panel. The board is superb IMO, I have set up over 15 of them. I actually like it a tad better then the Abit rev 2.0 even though the Abit overclocks higher. The Asus is just superb to me. Great product and worth the money.

[wasp]

ok ty barn

[Propain]

many boards theses days have awsome onboard sound . I got the Audigy 2 sound card with this board just out of curiosity and pulled it out and didnt really notice a difference.

[BARNEY]

A2 is far superior to any onboard solution other than Soundstorm in digital, it's just that you have to know how to configure it and use speakers or headphones worthy of it's features, otherwise you won't notice. A2 does EAX like no one else. Driver compatibility is another issue. Use some Senhieser cans and you'll hear the differerence even without driving them with an amp.

With MCP-T on the Asus deluxe and many other MCP_T boards, it really shines (actually only shines) if you use the digital out because it is the only solution that encodes dolby digital on the fly in 5.1 - and the signal is clear and clean. Use the Analog outs on the very same board and sound quality drops off about 40%.

As of right now the onboard solutions usually are AC97 (ALC 650) realtek, C-Media 8738,9739. VIA envy 24. The only one that even remotely comes close to Audigy 2 is the Envy chip, but...only in music. Games are not handled nearly as well. Moreover, the Audigy 2 has it's own processor on the card and does not offload much at all to your CPU.

Having said that I do see your point, and the point is that onboard can actually sound nice "if" you get a quality set of speakers or headphones and an amp. I don't game with EAX on anyway because positional audio is not handled correctly when EAX is enabled. I leave it off. I use Soundstorm for digital, and I use a Turtle Beach Santa cruise for music.