Originally Posted by Gamevet
Once again I have to disagree.
For starters, sounds cards are not powerful. They actually don't put out much wattage as the signal is going to be amplified by the speakers of a separate amplifier. Second, power output and sound quality aren't mutual. In fact I would say they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. I for one build computer professionally. I don't build customer systems with dedicated sound cards unless requested either. Doing it otherwise wouldn't make sense. You would increase the cost of the computer for something the customer isn't going to even notice because they're probably hooking up to a pair of $10 speakers anyhow. I also build all of my own computers. I listen to a lot of music on my main system, and thus it has pretty nice speakers and good dedicated sound card. My main system has a high end board with onboard sound. And with my headphones and my Klipsch speakers I can hear the interference and it just plain sounds like crap. Switch over to my $30 Creative 2.1 system and you can't hear the difference. They don't put high end sound cards on boards for the same reason we don't install dedicated sound cards in customer builds. It adds to the cost and the majority of people won't hear the difference.
I use my systems to demonstrate to customers. One of them was impressed with how good my speakers on my main system sounded. Without telling me he went out and bought the same speakers. Later he gave me a call thinking there was something wrong. He got the same speakers but it sounded like crap. I ordered him a dedicated card and put it in. After that it sounded great. As I said, you will never hear the difference on crappy speakers. Put on some good headphones or speakers and you will hear the difference.
My suggestion still stands that you should TOSlink to an external amp, either a surround sound reciever or maybe a T-amp to some good monitors. That way you can keep your Physx card and still have good sound quality.
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