On board sound vs a sound card Asus Hero VIII for FPS gaming

[gianquittia]

Has anyone compared the onboard sound to a dedicated card, such as the Asus Xonar Essence STX. I was just curious if it is worth adding a sound card for directional sound pinpointing playing FPS games or the onboard sound is good enough. I was thinking of getting the Beyerdynamic MMX300 headset or Audiotechnica AD700x headphones with a mic added on.

[Nate152]

Hello gianquittia, welcome to the ROG forum !

The Hero viii has the new ROG SupremeFX 2015 audio which is an upgrade from previous ROG boards. I haven't tried it yet but with sonic studio II it gives 7.1 audio through a stereo 2.0 headset. Sounds pretty sweet to me.

Try with the onboard sound and if you're not happy with it then go with a sound card.

[Chino]

Audio is subjective. I would say you use the onboard audio for a while. If you're not satisfied, then buy a sound card. 🙂

[Janne-71]

For myself i can say onboard audio is good enough. I used to have soundcard in my old system (Asus xonar dgx or something) and i prefer onboard sound of maximus viii hero to it. That's why i didn't even install the card in my system. Hard to say about higher tier soundcards, they could be different story but onboard audio is good.

[BOLOYOO]

I've never had a dedicated sound card, but compared to previous integrin SupremeFX is heaven and the earth. For me the sound is more than satisfactory, but a separate sound card may be even better - I don't know.

[edwin4321]

BOLOYOO wrote:
I've never had a dedicated sound card, but compared to previous integrin SupremeFX is heaven and the earth. For me the sound is more than satisfactory, but a separate sound card may be even better - I don't know.

Had been using xonar dx for years till it died recently now using onboard supreme fx but getting wierd saw like interference on occasion, any ideas?

[wils07]

G35 headset no need for soundcards

[pills]

I have a Hero VIII and SoundBlaster Z card and just did a light sound test, definitely sticking with my Z. Nothing too thorough simply fired up Crysis3 and played around in the first map for a bit and recorded my average FPS at certain points. With the onboard audio I was getting about 6 fps less than when I had the Z going, however, I don't think it was apples to oranges. My Z is running 5.1 via optical to my old Logi Z680's but could't for the life of me get optical 5.1 with onboard to work and had to do 5.1 via green/black/yellow audio cables, not sure if that makes any difference. Many people will give you different answers on this but IMHO for my setup I think dedicated is superior, as I'm offloading some of that work from the mobo onto my Z and in my experience dedicated card software is less buggy and a less pain in the ass to configure than Realtek's stuff.

[Mr_Wolf]

Did you tried the front panel connector for audio out?

I read here that the sabre dac and headphone buffer, needs drivers and is only in front panel:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1568154/asus-north-america-asus-z170-motherboards-q-a-thread/4500#post_25...
http://www.overclock.net/t/1568154/asus-north-america-asus-z170-motherboards-q-a-thread/4510#post_25...