REALTEK ALC1150 VS SOUNDBLASTER Z PRO

Oh and BTW, equalization is different for every person in the world, some like it sharper, some with more hiss, some with more emphasis on graves or high notes.So equalization always depends on who's listening! In terms of better performance it's more the output device that influences the sound. Of course money could be an issue but that wasn't what was asked. And as to having either an onboard X-Fi chip or a separate PCI/PCI-E X-Fi chip for me it's always better the second. As I said before it will probably fall short every time. Ok we already have I7s running a gazilion operations and that shouldn't be noticeable, at least for playback, but what if you're working on music samples?! IMO it's always better to have a separate card/chip than an onboard one, no matter how good an onboard chip can perform.

REALTEK ALC1150 VS SOUNDBLASTER Z PRO

Even if that's not noticed in playback as this soundcard gives you more than just playback, you can turn your PC into a recording/editing machine for audio samples, be it pro or amateur stuff! It's fact that an onboard chip requires some CPU effort to work (since it's onboard), and that the same chip in a PCI or PCI-E card will release the CPU from the effort of processing the audio engine. But as to what was asked and given my personal experience (I use an X-Fi Extreme Music for over three years now) almost any, if not all, onboard sound chips will probably fall a bit short to it. Sure, the soundboard is just a part of the equation. The real question is, if you had my two options, which would you use? Realtek onboard digital audio or the Soundblaster X-Fi with analog outputs? I'm not a big gamer, but I play music nearly 100% of the time I'm using my computer for Photoshop and Lightroom, so CPU cycles might be more important to me than digital? I realize the onboard audio might compromise CPU cycles whereas the Soundblaster would clear the CPU to do it's thing without providing audio, right? The mobo has digital out, while the Soundblaster uses analog connectors.

However, I have a 3-4 year old Soundblaster X-Fi Extreme Music card. I believe the mobo comes with the Realtek ALC1200 audio chip. I am running Vista 64-bit Home Premium with 6gb GCZ DDR3 triple-channel RAM.

I just purchased a Core i7 920 and an Asus P6T (no deluxe, no V2, just the plain P6T). New to Tom's Hardware, hope you can help with this question on onboard audio vs.

Realtek alc1150 vs soundblaster z