'Sound on board'

Hi

I have been offered a HP PIII 1000ghz system.
It has 'On-board-sound'.

I recall some time ago reading that this was not upgradeable.

Will I be able to replace or upgrade HP's 'on-board' if necessary?

Richard

 

If it has a free PCI slot (or ISA for that matter), yes.

Jon

 

if it's got a spare PCI slot, then it's replaceable. you just disable to
onboard sound in bios...

ric

 

Not upgradeable but possibly replaceable. If it can be disabled,
probably in the BIOS, then you can 'replace' it with your own sound card.

BTW, some of the onboard sound systems are quite good these days.
Probably not on an older system like this, but it might be worth
checking out.

Onboard sound doesn't define quality-you could theoretically take the
best sound card on the market & build it into a mobo, at which point it
would become onboard sound-and yet it would still be the best sound
available.

 

Boot the computer and hit delete (or whatever key HP uses) to get into BIOS
and see if it's possible to turn off onboard sound. Sometimes if you have
an aftermarket sound card and onboard sound is enabled, there are problems.
I haven't had any myself, but I've heard of them. I don't know why you
couldn't add a Turtle Beach or SoundBlaster card for sound.

--
Big Daddy Ruel Smith

My SuSE Linux machine uptime:
4:12pm up 32 days 0:58, 3 users, load average: 0.49, 0.33, 0.20

My Windows XP machine uptime:
Something less...

 

1000ghz? Like 1 Terrahertz? Boy that's fast........

 

I agree Calvin, tho I'd take umbridge regarding your "old PC" comment as
I'm writing this on a P400 [grin]. Anyway, yes the quality of onboard
sound varies greatly. For example, if you go with a quality motherboard
like ASUS or AOPEN with onboard sound even a computer tech may be
perfectly happy with the sound chipset they use.

The motherboard CD makes it easy to install/reinstall the drivers, and
if you lose the motherboard CD, one can easily find the drivers for the
Yamaha or other "card" that's on the mobo. On the other hand, if you're
using a PCchips/Jetway motherboard you're likely to find driver
installations a hassle if the system is older.

 

Honestly, the only onboard sound I've /ever/ found acceptable is the
chipset on my Asus A7N8X-Deluxe. 6 channel, nVidida SoundStorm enabled,
all sounds fantastic. This isn't even true of all nForce2 boards though,
as my brother's Chaintech nForce2 has a different chipset for sound that is
only 4 channel, no SoundStorm, and sounds pretty bad compared to my
TurtleBeach Santa Cruz (which replaced the onboard sound in that machine).

Even the older Asus and Epox boards I've owned (from Slot 1 through
SocketA) have relatively crappy sound compared to a decent $35 sound card.
For someone who just hears windows noises, the sound is definitely
adaquate, but for someone who listens to a lot of music and plays a lot of
games, I think something like a Santa Cruz for $40 from newegg.com is
probably the best $40 they could spend.

 

HP is somewhat known for proprietary components, but these days it's very
common for motherboards to have an audio chip built in, or "on board", so
it's not an HP thing per se. If it has free slots, you can add your own
video card and disable on board audio for all contemporary motherboards I've
seen.

 

To be clear, you are not replacing it, but overriding it.

 

To Plato: 'old PC' was referring to when it was probably manufactured,
not to obsolesence. At work I use a 1GHz PIII. At home I use a 400MHz
PII although I'm in the process of setting up a 1.8GHz P4.

To Demon: I agree about the general quality of onboard sound-but it's
that one exception (and any that I might *not* know about) that
prevented me from agreeing that all onboard sound was crappy. And I
believe that the board you cite is fairly new, like within the past
year, isn't it? (Won't swear to that as I can't find anything stating
when they started manufacturing it, but a quick search didn't turn up
any references to it earlier than 2003.)

Since a 1GHz PIII was likely manufactured earlier than that I assume
that it has crappy sound-but it's only an assumption so my advice was to
check.

 

Let's see... Optically coupled logic, near infrared clock frequency...
Where'd you get this beast, anyway? <G,d &r>

/------------------------------------------------------------\
| George Ruch |
| "Is there life in Clovis after Clovis Man?" |
\------------------------------------------------------------/

 

Unless the offer is FREE then the smart thing to do is decline the
offer.