Sound card increasing FPS?

[rx7i2]

I'm on the xfire website and looking at a sound card sweepstakes and It says "experience an FPS increase of over xx%!!" Im confused will upgrading from onboard sound to a pci sound card make a difference?

 

[BillGates]

I think the theory behind that is it takes the strain off of the motherboard since the sound card will be processing the sound. Don't know if it's true though.

 

[boomstick666]

its very true. but the amount of strain on CPU vary. any sound card w/ on board DSP (digital signal processing) use less to close to none CPU power. especially on recording and digital effect processing, on board DSP is very important. just like GPU. but for games, there arent so much processing is going on anyway compared to real recording, it wont affect to FPS that much. but it still is better to process sound seperately than only using CPU for everything. like if u r using AEX effects in game, the sound card is processing the sound. (or reverb sound when u go in to cave and stuff like that. digital reverb effect consumes a lot of processing power.)

 

[rx7i2]

what if im upgrading with a top-of-the-line 7.1 sound card?
Does it depend on the CPU on how much stress it puts into it?

 

[boomstick666]

what if im upgrading with a top-of-the-line 7.1 sound card?
Does it depend on the CPU on how much stress it puts into it?

ok. here is the thing. any top of the line sound card is for recording. not for playn back 7.1 or entertainment purpose. so if u want just surround sound, get anything that does it. its basically a card capable of 8 channel playback (7.1=8channels of audio) + if u want good sound for games, get something that supports AEX 5.0 (x-fi series is the only card right now supports it). but anyway, ull see 0.5 to 1 FPS gain from sound card if u r lucky. its not big at all u know. since all the graphix r now processed by GPU mostly. not the CPU.

 

[Lord AnthraX]

search next time....

http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=91716&highlight=

 

[joshd]

well, even using a card drops the framerate. when using 3dmark03, the difference between framerates on the no sounds, 12 hw voices and 64 hw voices is quite significant.

 

[Apokalipse]

if you have sounds on, they use CPU time.

better sound cards will take more load off the CPU.

the Sound Blaster X-Fi cards take most of the load off the CPU

 

[Crysalis]

If you dare think about getting the X-FI....


Read from the second page about half way down to the third page.

http://techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96322&perpage=15&pagenumber=2


X-FI has nothing but a compression and EQ circuit that makes you THINK it sounds better, but it doesn't.... by far. It actually just adds distortion which in turn, is bad for your speakers if you have a good system.

This is my source:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi-part2.html

 

[boomstick666]

If you dare think about getting the X-FI....


Read from the second page about half way down to the third page.

http://techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96322&perpage=15&pagenumber=2


X-FI has nothing but a compression and EQ circuit that makes you THINK it sounds better, but it doesn't.... by far. It actually just adds distortion which in turn, is bad for your speakers if you have a good system.

This is my source:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi-part2.html

well. i have x-fi and i like it for games. but ya the part it "makes the sound better than original/cd quality" or w/e they are saying is lie. sound can be as close as the original. but it never gets better than the original. btw, my 24-bit crystalizer is off. i personaly dont want my sound to be "crystalized". it hurts. but hey its only $100. great for games. if i had money, i would get apogee or mytek d/a and mcintosh amp w/nice set of proac speakers. but..at least i still got my ns-10...