Fact or Fiction?

Smartpart

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276
I heard from someone that your sound card can actually reduce you gameplay if it cant keep up. Not really sure what he was getting at.
 
higher quality sound may have an impact on performance. A sound card will take that load off the CPU.
 
If you have onboard sound, the processing is done by your CPU, if you have a dedicated sound card, it takes the load of your CPU. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Thats true. I stand by my words, when I say that I'd never ever use onboard sound for any purpose.

Sound quality is never as good, and performance can be an issue.

So, if you have onboard sound, the answer to your question is, yes, it can.
 
Is the issue here about sound quality?

Or Latency? I.E. You see the explosion and you hear it before/after a small delay.
 
Sound quality will always be an issue with onboard sound. The fact is, sound is affected largely by its parts, and I'm afraid that onboard sound chips aren't made with expensive parts to keep costs down. This causes the Signal To Noise Ratio (SNR) to be lower, which causes a whole range of issues when it comes to sound recording, and sound in general. Examples include with good enough speakers, being able to hear the computer working (i.e picking up hard drive/CPU frequency noises), and hisses.

If the CPU is also working hard in something, and the sound is believed to be a second priority, which it sometimes is when you are listening to audio while doing work for example. You may find the sound will cut out for a second or so, or if the sound is indeed a part of what you are doing, may lag, yes.

Sound cards don't cost much money, and will last a very long time. You don't get any of the problems of onboard sound, since they have their own small CPU's to handle all situations, and tend to be made from better parts.
 
I fully understand what your saying.

Although Latency can affect the gaming experience too if it is excessive.

The fact that the owner of the thread has been told that
your sound card can actually reduce you gameplay if it cant keep up
makes me think it's a latency issue that this person is refering too.

Although small software like ASIO4ALL will reduce this alot with small code that enables software to communicate directly with the sound hardware, rather than via the slow code in Windows, reducing latency to <10ms and in some cases 1ms!

But also make sure you have the up-to-date driver for your sound card will help as well.
 
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