Which is better, my sound card or onboard audio?

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1

This is the sound card I am using

http://us.store.creative.com/Sound-Blaster-XFi-XtremeGamer/M/B000J1F1BI.htm

And this is the motherboard I am using

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131877

It has Realtek ALC892 with 8 audio channels.

I am asking because I purchased my sound card several years ago now, back in 2008 I believe.

2

Your soundcard. It has a higher db/snr rating at 109. I didn't bother looking at the realtek for its snr but I guarentee it's not over 109.

3

Thanks CaptainPip :) However I am not an audiophile and do not even know what a db/snr rating is nor what it means in terms of performance and or quality. Would you care to educate me please? I really am interested. Sound cards are one of the few remaining hardware devices I am unfamiliar with. 

4

I myself am not a fount of knowledge on it either but from my understanding it's the amount of distortion and background noise. A quick wikipedia search returns a more in depth answer though. The differance isn't too massive that you'd notice without high quality headphones but it's still always nice as long as you have a decent sound card to throw into your rig.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise_ratio

Also if I recall high school physics 3db is twice the acoustic output but 10db is twice as loud to the ear, so I'm not sure if that translates over to this as it being 14db differance == ~5x less background noise?

5

the onboard has a SNR of 95Db