Onboard soundMAX drivers

[jives11]

Hi, I have an old dell dimension with onboard soundMAX audio. According to the dell download site, the last version of drivers were from 2003 :

Analog Devices ADI 198x Integrated Audio 12/02/2003

The soundMAX site is a bit confusing , does anyne know if it's OK to install later versions ? I have read that these can be motherboard specific.

As sound is an important part of gaming I'm keen to keep these up to date. The other option would be to get a PCI sound card, but the existing PC sound seems fine.

I also think, but would love to hear from other opinions, that you don't get any significant performance boost by offloading sound from MOBO to PCI card ?

 

[raybay]

Simple board. Simple sound system. Do what you want. The ADI 198x is tough. And alternate shound choices are cheap.
Did you drive your sound to loud levels. We find sound systems fail easily when over driven...
Also check your speakers, as speakers will fail before the card does... or the sound port.