Nostalgia for dedicated sound cards

[Spindel]

Ok so I was just thinking a bit and started to feel nostalgic for dedicated sound cards. 

 

But let's set things straight first. As some might have figured out I am a Mac user (iMac) so currently the entire deal with expandability isn't really my thing now days. But in late 90ies early 2000s I used to build my own PCs. 

 

And yes I know there are still dedicated sound cards, but AFAIK it's either really niche or not really needed. 

 

But back in the day I remembered there being a big difference between sound cards. Back then a lot of music in games where MIDI and the difference between a low tier sound card and for example a Sound Blaster AWE 32 was immense in games. 

 

I also remembered when I upgraded my sound card (Gravis Ultrasound) to a Sound Blaster with EAX support, it was a big deal. 

 

Also since CPU power was more limited back then a good sound card could positively impact your performance in games. 

 

What I don't miss is odd ports being relegated to the sound card (FireWire, joystick). 

 

Today sound cards are a non issue because the integrated sound in every system is good. But I still can't stop dreaming (through nostalgia) that having dedicated sound cards to fiddle with was a thing to differentiate your system from your friends.

 

Maybe it was the modularity of old computers that had a charm. Back then you hade your mother board with CPU and RAM, Networking was a expansion card, sound was a expansion card, you had a graphics as a expansion card, you had a 3d accelerator as an expansion card (separate from your graphics card) etc. 

 

 

Oh and my prediction of the next thing to go away as a dedicated expansion (and this will upset a lot of people here) is graphics. 

[Helly]

11 minutes ago, Spindel said:

Oh and my prediction of the next thing to go away as a dedicated expansion (and this will upset a lot of people here) is graphics. 

Upsets no one, because it is simply NOT happening. If it happened at all it would be by adding another socket to the motherboard for the GPU. But seeing as GPU's use a lot of power it would mean another massive heatsink on the motherboard. Not to mention you'd need more RAM slots as GPU's use different RAM. The heatsink alone would block a lot of the space needed for expansion cards. Or they would have to increase the size of the motherboard.

Let's just cut to it and say that adding the graphics to the motherboard makes the board WAY to complicated, and onboard gpu's are simply not powerful enough, and they'll never be.

[WereCatf]

18 minutes ago, Spindel said:

Oh and my prediction of the next thing to go away as a dedicated expansion (and this will upset a lot of people here) is graphics

Not happening, literally zero chance. Back in the day there were plenty of mobos with GPUs built into them and guess what happened? Oh, that's right: you just can't cram a high-end GPU into a mobo, period, and those mobo-builtin GPUs went the way of the dodo and became discrete ones.

[X-System]

I still have my Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Surround 5.1 Pro USB (bought 8 years ago) for my HTPC with Genius SP-HF1800A. It's great

[dilpickle]

I built my first PC in 2001 and I've never owned a sound card.

 

A high end GPU is essentially a motherboard unto itself so its hard to integrate it with anything.