Re: Poll - How many people use onboard audio and what is it?

On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:45:05 -0700, Benjamin Gawert <bgawert@xxxxxx>
wrote:

* Stowie:

Generally speaking, onboard audio uses your CPU to double as a DSP to
process audio signals, so you are generally looking at a 10-20% drop
in CPU performance by ditching the audio card.

Generally this is nonsense. Even old AC97 sound chips usually caused
less than 10% CPU load, and modern on-Board audio chipsets are even more
effective. Besides that, it's not that the Creative Labds drivers are
well known for their stability or for saving ressources...

The only drawback of using on-Board audio is that one can't use certain
features (i.e. EAX). Besides that it's just fine...

It ain't worth it, I
say downgrade the cooling. I always tell gamers with onboard audio
the best way to speed up their PC is to get a $50 sound card to take
that load off the CPU. You are likely to see stuttering in some games
-- if not now, depending on the rest of your setup -- you will see it
in the future when games with higher requirements come along.

If games start to stutter on this computer a PCI soundcard is very
unlikely to make it go away...

Benjamin, having an Audigy and an X-FI but ditched both for using
on-Board sound

Provide sources and benchmarks... I'm standing at the ready to send
you some serious tomshardware links. Admittedly I haven't followed
onboard audio advancements in the last year or so but I really doubt
things have changed that much since then. Offloading sound processing
to another card might not be as dramatic as offloading graphics
processing, but it is the same basic concept. Even a 5% performance
hit is noteworthy. Some of the Core 2 Duo benchmarks are only 10%
faster than AMD, yet people are going ape*** over them. The tragedy
of forgoeing EAX and the like is another reason for the average user
to plonk down $30-60 for a good card.. we are not talking a lot of
money here. Also, keep in mind the original poster ALREADY HAS a
sound card, and he is asking about giving it up for better cooling, a
problem brought on by a small chassis case. Since he already has a
great sound card, why would anyone besides a fucktard recommend he
upgrade his case?

This NG is for action games, so I am assuming he wants to play FPS
games. While my comments may not apply to strategy and RPG games, my
research indicates his best route to system performance is to keep the
card he has and drop the extra cooling unless he is running in a
really hot room, then he should look at a better case.


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