on board sound or sound card?

[rudeboymcc]

hi. i've noticed that a lot of motherbaords these days come with on board sound card and some with very good ones. are the on board sound cards just as good as the pci ones? i'm not after amazing 7 point surround sound (if there is such a thing), just 5.1 dolby for my movies. well?

[The Edge]

Some of the new motherboards have excellect on-board sound.
It at least frees up one PCI slot for future use but the on-board sound can usually be disabled via the BIOS anyway. They're usually just as good as PCI ones. The Audigy 2 for example, has firewire connection, which is a nice bonus.

Edge

[theReal]

AOpen released a board with an on-board tube-amplifier recently:
http://club.aopen.com.tw/pss/largeview.asp?modelname=AX4B-533%20Tube&img=/Products/MB/images/Products/ax4b-533tube-b.jpg
HIFI experts consider it a joke, but maybe you're interested?
Well, I guess not, because the tubes burn out every once and then, they produce additional heat and they take up a lot of valuable space for PCI slots...

[rudeboymcc]

only three pci slots!!!! that's terrible. i have noticed that on the motherboards with good sound cards. for example abit has one i saw. http://www.dabs.com/products/prod-info3-info.asp?&m=y&quicklinx=1YFZ

and you can see only 3 pci slots.