On Board Sound?

[Oldtimer]

A question for the techie gurus please:

I'm currently running onboard sound on my Foxconn X38a Mobo, but I do have an Audigy 2 sound card from my old rig that I could press into service.

[Sid]

I know narrrthink about your mobo OT, but my Asus Extreme came with onboard 5.1 sound and a 5.1 Creative Soundblaster Audio Exteme card I had put in. I have tried both and come to the conclusion that the Creative card has better sound and more options for setting it up. I have disabled the onboard and have run with the card for months and have no intention of replacing it. If I do it will be with my backup Audigy 2 from out of my old rig........

As to the plugging in, I'm not sure it would - that would be for someone else. Another option is to plug the speakers (if you have some) into the card at the back and run Teamspeak from a set of USB headphones that plug into one of the available USB sockets on the front. This keeps game sounds and TS seperate and works fine and dandy once the correct selection has been made in the pooters sound setup.

Cheerzen

Sid 

[Oldtimer]

Err....

[Sid]

Ahh....still nothing better than the Mk1 eyeball

[Oldtimer]

Mk 1 eyeball conversations are verboten in this house...

[Sid]

Mk 1 eyeball conversations are verboten in this house...

[Perfesser]

FYI

I still have on board sound and a rats nest of splitter connectors in back of mine for my 5.1 speakers, 5.1 headphones, line out to amp, line out to wireless remote speakers.

The line out jack probably goes to 4 different functions via 3 splitters.

And the headphone jack on your speakers probably has no place to plug in the mic.

[GreyKnight]

Before I bought this new PC, my old PC was a single core, pile of crap that I used to run with onboard sound. When I fitted a SB Audigy2 card in to it, I swear I got about 2FPS improvement out of it.

Well worth doing in my opinion.

[DD_Brando]

Until I bought my present set of Creative headphones - which comes with a long enough cable to reach around the back of the 'puter - I used the speaker jack (green plug) for sound, and put an extension on the mic (purple) jack to reach the back of the case. So a male/ female mini-jack extension would be a cheap way to sort out a working solution.

I agree with Grey Knight about the improvement that an Audigy 2 will bring over an on-board chip. Provided that your Audigy is the kind that has its own APU (Look HERE for info on which card you have) then you will experience a considerable improvement in sound quality. Give us a shout when it comes to installation issues.

B

[Oldtimer]

Thanks for your help guys.

[Strider]

Hi, OT!

Did you disable the on-board sound through Control Panel---> Sounds and Audio Devices--->Hardware Tab--->(click on your on-board sound device in the list)--->click on disable?

Might make a difference.

~S~, m8!

[Oldtimer]

Thanks Strider,

I was aware that I needed to disable onboard sound, but couldn't find it in the BIOS.

[DD_Brando]

Here's a very complete article on the Intel High Definition Audio chipset on your board.

It can be disabled through the BIOS Menu - it is on the ODB Configuration page, and is listed as the HDA Controller.

B

[Oldtimer]

Thanks B (I think!)

[DD_Brando]

Yeah, I know what you mean!

BTW. It's the OBD sub-menu, not ODB - sorry for the goof. It stands for On-Board Devices. It's the best place to disable the system as, among other reasons, it won't be affected by using System Restore. When you reboot after disabling it, Windows will not 'see' the device and therefore will not load any drivers for it.

B