Like many things in the world of PC gaming, PC audio is a heavily fragmented mixture of competing and legacy standards. The PC audio sound-scape NVIDIA’s control panel software will detect any HDMI audio output devices Do we really not need a sound card in our PC’s any more? After a recent upgrade of my surround sound receiver for full Wii-U compatibility (thanks Nintendo) I decided to set about answering that question. Like me, many of you probably did a double take when you read that for the first time. As long as you have a capable TV, monitor or AV receiver to go with your modern GPU, you can simply fire up “Manage audio devices” in Windows, configure your speakers appropriately and enjoy both picture and audio down one HDMI cable.

For all intents and purposes this means that modern graphics cards are now also sound cards too. The latest graphics cards from both NVIDIA and ATI come with a new feature, namely audio over HDMI. If you’re building a new PC or even just upgrading an existing rig, there’s one interesting fact you may have overlooked if you haven’t upgraded for a few years.

Whats my sound card