nessessary components?

[Kye]

i have a soundcard which came with the motherboard on the small slot at the bottom of the motherboard. its put in, but thats all. its not connected by a molex connector or anything, neither do i use it at the back.

i dont use it, so is it really needed? can i take it out, or is the motherboard using it? since the speakers are plugged into the motherboard itself then theres no need for the sound card? just a simple question.

 

[ChristopherP]

simple - try it! if it dosent work, put it back in.

My guess is that its needed. May be wrong

 

[muckshifter]

AMR = 'Audio Modem Riser' slot, I really hate those things, especially when in use.

 

[ChristopherP]

whats bad about them?

 

[muckshifter]

whats bad about them?

You loose a PCI slot.

 

[ChristopherP]

that it?

 

[Kye]

its not a PCI slot, its a smaller slot...

if its not being used, i dont want it there. it creates dust.

 

[muckshifter]

that it?

Nope, but I wanted to keep the reply simple.


The main drawback is that any 'riser' you use will invariably use your CPU to do its work for you. The thinking behind 'risers' is that the modern CPU has more than enough performance and has plenty of spare capacity to do extra tasks. In particular, it's argued that the work done by hardware on items like sound cards and modems is very trivial when compared to the spare CPU power available in the average PC. With a little extra software and a simple interface this spare power can be harnessed making it unnecessary to fit full blown PCI cards for these functions.

Motherboard manufactures think it a good idea that encourages System Builders to buy their product with a riser card as it is cheaper ... what System builders then fail to fit is a decent CPU to cope with the extra workload.

Fitting a PCI equivalent of the riser card will free-up CPU cycles to do other things ... in essence, you have a 'faster' system by using a 'hardware' PCI alternative.

Be aware however when replacing a modem riser as you can also get 'software modem' ... that is an AMR that uses a PCI slot and pretends to be a modem ... always state, when ordering, you want a 'hardware modem'. As for a decent Audio card, well I'll leave that to you.

its not a PCI slot, its a smaller slot...
if its not being used, I don’t want it there. It creates dust.

I know, however, if you want to remove it you'll need to replace it with a PCI version.