Is there anything to be gained by installing a sound card?

[skaler]

In the context of an ASUS A8N-E motherboard with onboard sound, an Opteron170 CPU, and a GeForce 7900GS videocard with 256megs, and 1 gig of CAS2 latency ram?
I recently downloaded and installed the fakefactory cinematic mod to Half Life2 as well as The Lost Coast. The cinematic mod does stutter and on just a few occasions, there is some freezing of the motion on the screen.
The ASUS board has onboard sound,as I mentioned, which is what I'm using. I do own a Creative Labs Audigy2ZS. It is installed in another computer. Would it help the Opteron170 any to use the Audigy2? I heard that a sound card unloads some of the processor's work, but I wonder if it is significant.
Thanks.

[Learux]

Yes, no contest, put that ZS in and enjoy.It only helps the opteron a little bit, but where the soundcard really shines is positional audio!

Learux

[Isezumi]

No its not significant.

[brblx]

the only thing you'll gain with a soundcard is better sound. you're not going to significantly improve framerate.

and the sound really isn't any better either, there's just less noise and interference. unless you install an xfi, which seems to have about a one in four chance of being worse than onboard sound.

i'd buy a non-creative card. if creative, an audigy2 or even a live will work as well as anything else they sell.

[Adaman]

A new sound card can be huge, depending on what your current sound card is. If you listen to a lot of music or game a lot definitely get a nice sound card.

[Spank_Me_Hard]

No its not significant.

LOL!

[rolling bear]

as far as I Know, any onboard sound is inferior to an add on sound card. now you don't really gain that much in performance , if at all, but you do get better sound, no question about it.

if you like to play games then creative cards such as Xfi support the latest EAX (which is the standard used in games which will give more realistic sounds), while non creative cards can be better in some ways (better quality) and worse in other (only support older versions of EAX).

you should of course also have some good speakers (with subwoofer preferably), otherwise you can just stick to onboard audio.

edit: I don't know why you have stutters. I play half life 2 with an old GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and it's fine so I don't think it's a lack of power in your system.

[commanderkeen]

LOL!

I'm happy that you are amuzed by the correct answer. (Which of course was to the question of unloading some calculations off of the cpu).

[Spank_Me_Hard]

I'm happy that you are amuzed by the correct answer.

I'm happy that my amusement makes you happy!

And yes.

She/He was right on the original question.