Hi, I recently built a PC for my son to use for recording his band. I figured this wasn't a particularly challenging application and I used a 2600XP processor in an Abit NF7S V2 motherboard with 500MB of RAM and a Maxtor 120GB hard drive. He's talking about buying a sound card for it and I wonder if anyone has a view on the on-board sound of the NF7-S board vs buying a PCI card? I bought the NF7-S for its speed and overclocking stability with no thought to on-board sound.. Also, if it is inferior, could anyone point me to a good alternative sound card? Also, does anyone have any knowledge of hardware/software solutions that turn a PC into a pretty fully-fledged recording studio? Thanks Pavesa

Sound card is very much cheaper than display card. But if u dun have some very good 7.1 speaker or very expensive earpiece , i dun think u can feel the different! my PSU Sux!my cpu is quiet!

there's several advantages of a sound card over onboard audio (that you don't need surround sound speakers to benefit from). Onboard audio requires the CPU to do the processing. This takes cycles away from everything else that it could be doing. With a soundcard, those cpu cycles are freed up. The other thing a sound card does is distance the sound processing and data traffic from the electrically noisy motherboard. Many people, when using onboard audio, complain about static, feedback, electrical crackling, popping, etc. A sound card solves this issue. It's very true that even the best soundcards don't come close to the cost of video cards. most people are fine with one under $100, and i'm sure you could get something sweet for under $200. Creative is pretty much the only name in soundcards. I would look into their products, and then find a comfortable balance between cost and features.

Below is a link to a review of that MBoard. The specs for the integrated sound look pretty good. My recommendation would be for your son to try the onboard sound out and if he feels in is not good enough then check into buying an add in card. BTW, that board and chipset was one of the best of that generation. http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/Moth...

Hi, thanks very much for the information and insights. This is all new stuff for me. The NF7-S was a good board, I still have 2 PC's running on this 2004 hardware and they're fine for recording TV, routine internet browsing and listening to YouTube. I'll suggest he has a go with the on-board sound and then go for the $100-$200 budget suggested by UpAndComing. Thanks a lot for the help/advice Pavesa