Where does sound come to my headset if I don’t have a sound card?

[GamerBlake]

I don’t have a sound card in my PC but I still get good sound in all the games I play and videos I watch. Which component is providing the sound? Also what is the point of a sound card if you can get sound without one?  

[bmx6454]

that motherboard has an integrated one. this: Realtek^® ALC1220 Codec. should have a chip on the board that looks like this:

edit:

12 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

Also what is the point of a sound card if you can get sound without one?

pretty sure that's for higher quality sound, and/or features the integrated doesn't have.

[GamerBlake]

3 minutes ago, bmx6454 said:

that motherboard has an integrated one. this: Realtek^® ALC1220 Codec. should have a chip on the board that looks like this:

edit:

pretty sure that's for higher quality sound, and/or features the integrated doesn't have.

Oooh okay gotchya! Here is a question I have: Do higher quality motherboards provide better sound? Or do all motherboards from $80-$800 have the same sound chip?

[JakeSublime]

Generally, all motherboards for general PC use come with sound capabilities built into the motherboard. Just like, you get video without a video card, from your motherboard and cpu. 

A video card is applied to a system that expects to deal with and do calculations for video. Gaming, rendering, GPU mining, AI computing, etc. 

So, you can guess, a sound card is used when you expect to deal alot with sound. Sound is not as difficult to calculate as graphics are, so you can get away with a basic sound chip on the motherboard and it will suffice. 

[JakeSublime]

1 minute ago, GamerBlake said:

Oooh okay gotchya! Here is a question I have: Do higher quality motherboards provide better sound? Or do all motherboards from $80-$800 have the same sound chip?

There will likely be a difference, but you would need to see what the motherboard is made for, and check the manufacturer specs for it. 

Generally, a manufacturer will ALWAYS advertised their better thing if it has a better thing. So just look at the motherboard specs for specific boards. 

[GamerBlake]

1 minute ago, JakeSublime said:

Generally, all motherboards for general PC use come with sound capabilities built into the motherboard. Just like, you get video without a video card, from your motherboard and cpu. 

A video card is applied to a system that expects to deal with and do calculations for video. Gaming, rendering, GPU mining, AI computing, etc. 

So, you can guess, a sound card is used when you expect to deal alot with sound. Sound is not as difficult to calculate as graphics are, so you can get away with a basic sound chip on the motherboard and it will suffice. 

Do you know if higher end motherboards provide better sound than lower end ones?

 

Or will an $800 motherboard and $80 motherboard both provide the same quality sound?

[GamerBlake]

Just now, JakeSublime said:

There will likely be a difference, but you would need to see what the motherboard is made for, and check the manufacturer specs for it. 

Generally, a manufacturer will ALWAYS advertised their better thing if it has a better thing. So just look at the motherboard specs for specific boards. 

Oh ok thanks! Mine is a MEG Z390 ACE which I upgraded from my old MSI z270-a Pro.

[ImAlsoRan]

2 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

Do you know if higher end motherboards provide better sound than lower end ones?

 

Or will an $800 motherboard and $80 motherboard both provide the same quality sound?

The difference usually comes to noise tolerance (from either a better chip or better shielding), but even that will usually come from higher-quality capacitors, still only found on expensive motherboards. I really just recommend you get an external headphone amp as those usually have the highest power and quality DACs, and they are separated from all of your PC components which means less noise.

[JakeSublime]

Just look at each motherboard specs and see if the sound chip/device has changed between the 2 boards. If yes, then the sound is very well could be higher quality than before. 

But, it takes a bit of research on which chips are good and not good or whatever. Im not an expert there, just pointing you in the right direction. 

[Mark Kaine]

3 minutes ago, JakeSublime said:

Just like, you get video without a video card, from your motherboard and cpu. 

that's mostly for Intel CPUs though.

 

Most AMD don't have igpu and as such you're screwed without a gpu... 

 

I think I only had one Intel CPU so far, a Pentium 1, pretty sure that somehow had integrated graphics too cause I could play just fine without a gpu.

 

[Gamer Schnitzel]

2 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

Do you know if higher end motherboards provide better sound than lower end ones?

 

Or will an $800 motherboard and $80 motherboard both provide the same quality sound?

more expensive ones usually have different ones. its hard to say that they are better because they are all the same. integrated sound these days is pretty decent which is why nobody buys sound cards anymore unless they are audiophiles or really care about sound.

sound cards are also shit because they can have interference. that's why people who do care abotu sound buy a dac which is external and cannot get interference.

 

if you want to check your sound card on the motherboard just google the motherboard and check the spec. it will tell you. most of them have RealTek ones so you can tell by how high the number is whether they are "better" or "worse" but most people cant differentiate between motherboard sound cards.

[GamerBlake]

Just now, Gamer Schnitzel said:

more expensive ones usually have different ones. its hard to say that they are better because they are all the same. integrated sound these days is pretty decent which is why nobody buys sound cards anymore unless they are audiophiles or really care about sound.

sound cards are also shit because they can have interference. that's why people who do care abotu sound buy a dac which is external and cannot get interference.

 

if you want to check your sound card on the motherboard just google the motherboard and check the spec. it will tell you. most of them have RealTek ones so you can tell by how high the number is whether they are "better" or "worse" but most people cant differentiate between motherboard sound cards.

What about the MEG z390 ACE?

[JakeSublime]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

that's mostly for Intel CPUs though.

 

Most AMD don't have igpu and as such you're screwed without a gpu... 

 

I think I only had one Intel CPU so far, a Pentium 1, pretty sure that somehow had integrated graphics too cause I could play just fine without a gpu.

I'm 100% confident the majority of consumer low end computers are shipped without GPUs. Enthusiast PCs are a minority to world wide PCs. 

[Slayerking92]

21 hours ago, GamerBlake said:

I don’t have a sound card in my PC but I still get good sound in all the games I play and videos I watch. Which component is providing the sound? Also what is the point of a sound card if you can get sound without one?  

It really depends what you are connecting to play those sounds.

 

If you are using headphones/speakers plugged into the front audio or rear audio jacks.  That would be the onboard sound chip.

 

HDMI audio would be sending the digital signal from your video card, and whatever device that is connected to would be the sound processor.

 

a USB headset would use a sound chip built into the device.