At just under 30 bucks, Diamond's latest 7.1 sound card is a worthwhile investment for anyone still suffering through on-board sound.

Audio chips have come a long way in recent years. With 7.1 sound cards, such as the Diamond XtremeSound, costing around the 30 dollar mark, there is no excuse for putting up with on-board sound anymore. The quality improvement you get when you go from a cheap motherboard sound chip, to something that is seperate from the motherboard, can be astonishing. But, this is not always the case. So the question is, for your 30 dollars, would you notice an incremental improvement in sound quality over a motherboard sound chip?



The answer to this question is not as simple as we would like. There are, after all, many different types of on-board sound chips. Some are better than others, and therefore your mileage with cheaper sound card such as the XtremeSound 7.1 may vary. Suffice to say, after installing the card into a middle of the range system, we did notice a slight improvement in sound quality in comparison with the on-board chip.