Is A Sound Card Absolutely Needed ?

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

As said above, sound cards are NOT required on contemporary computers (the past 8 years) because that's what the onboard sound chip is suppose to do. Newer sound chips are just as good as sound cards since all the processing is done on the CPU anyways.xboxrulz

[Quatrux 4]

I don't really remember, but as I know if there is no sound card or something or similar stuff, the processing is done by CPU as said, so if I don't have one, and will try to play an MP3 file, it will be done by the chip using CPU which will be much slower than with a decent sound card, besides almost all motherboards include a sound card drive and yeah, if you have a bad sound system, speakers and etc, only stereo you don't really need a good sound card, for a better sound you should have at least 5.1 surround system or even better, only when you should get a good sound card.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Ya, but remember, most sound cards don't offer hardware acceleration anyways. It's not going to pull much performance off the system even if you had a hardware acceleration.xboxrulz

[Atomic0 0]

A sound card is not necessary unless your motherboard does not have an on-board audio chip or the on-board audio chip does not meet your audio needs. Many on-board audio chips on motherboards now also have HD audio i.e. featuring surround sound and special digital audio inputs/outputs. If you are an audio fanatic and require extremely high quality sound input, you should invest in a separate quality sound card, which are quite expensive in the high-end range. These specialised sound cards have features (e.g. electromagnetic shielding) that help deliver high quality sound without distortion, although differences may not evident in all situations where audio is used.