Article from tomshardware:

One thing's for sure: conventional onboard sound is hazardous for performance levels and, paradoxically, it costs a lot of money. Some folks may not believe this, but it is a fact! Now there's something to think about.

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The article from toms hardware does not say that "conventional onboard sound is hazardous for performance levels and, paradoxically, it costs a lot of money." Nor do the the results of the tests suggest that. Try RTFA. Your conclusions look almost completely made up, and is completely misleading.

Erm... yes it does. Did you RTFA ?

Go read the conclusion again (last paragraph).

How about, onboard sound other than the nForce2 APU is bad... This particular chip put less load on the CPU than the Audigy 2.

On the other hand, the paragraph before the last one mentions this:



The magical combinations "Audigy", "excellent choice" and "musical features" mentioned in the same sentence? Now that's a complete load...

I know for sure that my integrated Realtek AC650 gives much better gaming performance than my Terratec EWX 24/96 (non-resampling). On the other hand, EWX's musical features beat anything Creative has ever offered. Not to mention that it offers a full 36-bit internal resolution and doesn't crash the PCI bus.

It's not my conclusion

One question: How do you know that the Audigy2 has less than 36-bit internal DSP resolution ?

Well, the article clearly finishes saying "One thing's for sure: conventional onboard sound is hazardous for performance levels and, paradoxically, it costs a lot of money".

But, this is true just for gaming, with 3d effects enabled and such. With plain stereo sounds without EAX and 3d effects I doubt there will be much difference. Anyway, just for gaming, an old Live! is more than enough. By the way, cards such as M-Audio Revolution and Terratec Aureon will suffer from this too, since I believe they use software 3d effects too.

So, onboard cards sort of cost money because they slowdown the system. If you are very concerned on this, just disable 3d effects (cost free). Most people that use crappy multimedia speakers won't notice a difference.

I guess than for best gaming/sound quality balance, something like Audigy 1, TB Santa Cruz or Hercules CS4624 based cards would be the best option.

This is all bullshit. An onboard sound chipset gets top performance, while 2 more get bottom performances, and the conclusion is that onboard sound sucks? WTF is this?

Because EMU10k2 internally operates at 32-bit, but it can't accept 24-bit or 32-bit sound, it truncates it to 16-bit and then upsamples.
Even my DMX 6fire does better than that.

Have to agree with Tangent. All the results from the tests result in the same ranking:

None
Onboard
OnCard
OnCard
Onboard
Onboard

Not to mention the nForce2 APU slaughters the Audigy 2 in all the benchmarks. Then he concludes that the onboard chipset sucks, like wtf is that?

"and Quake 3 runs EAX 1 if the audio processor supports it."

hmm I wonder if this causes any significant cycle reduction he doesn't really make mention which ones are EAX capable.

I know if I have a new product that I would love to market I would send it off to tom with a big phat check enclosed with it.

Onboard/offboard does not mean anything by itself, it matters more which "chip" gets soldered, and how good its shielding is, in other words, quality of the manufacturer.

Fact is, on average, they don't put the best of the chips onboard, or take enough considerations for shielding as separate cards normally do. Its also a component that is increasing value, a component that you may decide to never use it anyway, so typically the less onboard things, the best.

I wouldn't mind if my mobo would come with a M-Audio Revolution instead of this... um... (lets see) er.. some "Realtek" AC97 thing ^^! (Ah yes, ALC650) What did you just said about this thing? I knew i saw that crab somewhere

It's Tom's Hardware. It's much more enlightening to just read the test setups and look at the results. Reading the commentary will often leave you either confused or calling shenanigans.

Up until the last year or so, the onboard audio and video controllers have been crap. Slow video and poor sound quality were expected considering the chips the manufacturers used. I.E. ATI Rage Pro and Creative SB16.

This quote seems to be a part of the issue with on board sound.

For AMD fans, we can only recommend the excellent nForce 2, provided it is implemented on the motherboard with the APU. But be warned, a lot of manufacturers don't actually use this part of nForce 2, going instead for the slower, conventional audio chips.

For example:
Check the ASUS A7N8X spec sheet:
"ASUS A7N8X provides a revolutionary audio/video experience"
"Realtek® ALC650 6CH w/built in HP amplifier"

I sure would be happier with something from Crystal Semiconductor.

Peace