Sound Blaster upgrade worth it?

Will the sound coming out of my laptop speakers actually sound better with an upgraded X-Fi card? I'm thinking of getting an Asus G73SW-A1, and it has an option for $100 to get the X-Fi 5.1 Surround card. I'm just thinking, why would that matter if it's just laptop speakers? However, I will be hooking my laptop up to a Denon home theater system from time to time, so will it matter then? For Blurays let's say, how will the sound differ, both coming out of the laptop speakers and going to my Denon via HDMI? Besides software that comes with it, I never understood sound card upgrades.

 

No. Didn't even have to read your full post. A sound card will not drive your laptop speakers by default and their quality is the lowest common denominator (not the sound card)

Also, I got a much better sound card for 50$. If you actually need quality for some reason its much more appropriate and worth it to get an external firewire or usb card.

 

You do realize that the X-Fi 5.1 Surround card is an external USB card, right? So it won't be able to drive your notebook speakers at all, unless you do some strange wiring. So, as stated, it will have no effect at all on your notebook speakers, but it would on whatever you hooked up to them.

 

I have the 5.1 currently. It definitely sounds better than my laptop speakers, but it does not drive the sound to the laptop, as everybody else mentioned. However, I bought this for a bargain and quite happy with it, and have a set of speakers connected to it.

 

The G73-sw has HDMI 1.4, the surround over HDMI should be carried as 5.1 to your audio/video reciever over the HDMI as bypass from the BR player. So the sound card will do nothing for your reciever.

The idea of a sound card is in non bypass situations, where the sound needs for some reason to be system proccesed. Since this is a USB sound card it then only effects outside speakers as mentioned or where you say play a games and have the soundcards output routed threw the reciever.

If by configuration the sound over HDMI is not configured to bypass 5.1, some systems will do this, then use the mini SPDIF output of the laptop. With that as the bypass the system may also support other enhancements too.............

 

Who the hell would want a big external thing hanging out of their laptop? I guess you'd only plug it in while at home anyways, such as to a home theater. Sounds like I'll still have 5.1 then even with the stock audio? I'm gonna go through HDMI, which I don't see why it would differ from the other audio outs.

 

I don't think the stock audio supports 5.1 natively... although if you're playing from something with 5.1 source, it'll support passthrough (probably through the HDMI) for processing down the line. In other words, if you're trying to play a Blu-Ray or DVD with 5.1 from your notebook optical drive, if you try to play the sound through your notebook speakers, it won't be 5.1, but if you pass the sound (and video, naturally) through HDMI to your home theatre system (thus bypassing your internal audio), then you could get 5.1 (assuming your home theatre system supports 5.1).