IL2 1946 & SoW Sound Cards v Onboard Chipsets

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

I've got to say, that I am puzzled again and again how much money people spend on monitors and graphics-card to get the perfect immersion from a game. Never ever would they consider tuning down graphics enough to run them via onboard graphics.

For some odd reason, the same bunch of people insist that running sound through cheap crappy onboard-chips and a 10$ headset provides the best sound available.




I use an x-fi soundcard linked to an HiFi-Amplifier and a HiFi-Headset with a frequency range from 5Hz to 25kHz.
I honestly never understood why people were not shaken by the original sound of 50s or didn't notice any difference between different engine sounds. With a good setup you surely do.

I build high end gaming rigs for a living its my own business and i build custom PC's to order. The main problem i find is simply fitting sound cards into PC's, most of my customers want either SLI, Tri SLI or Crossfire setups which leaves little to no space to squeeze a sound card in. I always try to include a X-Fi card into the build but most times its either not possible or I have to physically modify the card to get it to fit. Even then a sound card squeezed between two GPU's is not ideal considering the temps these cards run at.
For me there has been no comparison regarding sound quality, a good quality sound card has always been far better than any onboard option. How ever of late a lot of high end boards are now addressing this and including 7.1channel HD audio has standard.
It does appear that the major high level motherboard manufactures have written off the soundcard and give it little consideration when planning the layout of their boards, which i think is a shame. Obviously this is only an issue when fitting more than one GPU.