Sound Card bottleneck?

[Burn]

is it possible for a soundcard to bottle neck video performance?

 

[Peter.Cort]

depends. if you are running high quality sound in game and have a lowish end cpu then the cpu has to do extra work to encode/decode sound putting strain on the cpu to play the game and to work on the sound. that would cause frame stuttering at certain points, so the short answer is yes, depending on teh game and the rest of your system. it shouldn't, but its definitely possible.

 

[Waphlez]

It shouldn't ever be a problem. The only time audio will have any real impact on overall performance is if there is some software/driver incompatibility.

 

[BongWizard]

i suppose that depends on what type if interface the sound is being sent over... if its standard 3.5mm then you really shouldn't have a problem, but if you're using HDMI sound from your GPU that could affect the GPU load, and thus create a bit if a bottleneck... i'd check how fast you're able to encode and decode a standard length compressed audio file (if you can do better than real time you should have no bottlenecks)... also, you could try simply changing the connection to your speakers... try a 3.5mm jack and see if you get any issues

 

[gurusan]

no.

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