Sound Card = 40% more FPS!!!

Even if there was no sound in most games today, I highly doubt framerates would jump by 40%. With most sound formats not even using 5% CPU usage on a 700MHz CPU (mine), it's very slim that any sound format drain 40% of the fps on any game.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Lukage

I think Merv is pointing out the fact that a bar of soap is better then onboard sound and that pointing out the obvious is rather rediculous.

Actually the only flaw of onboard sound is CPU usage. But considering most PCs over 1GHz can more than handle any form of playback, the issue isn't so much game speed increase, but features.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Cetra

The only flaw happens to be the harshest flaw. 5% of a 2Ghz processor is actually a huge waste of resources. Think about it in reverse. A 5% overclock can result in a 10-20FPS increase in performance depending on your stock clock rate. If you are hovering near 100% CPU utilization, that 5% could mean the difference between a playable and non-playable experience.

Yeah, well that's 5% usage on a 700MHz CPU, on a 2GHz or higher, it's probably lower than 1%. Remember though, also keep in CPU usage tests they do for soundcards do things that you'd probably never try on a PC (like playing back 32 wav files at the same time).

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Originally Posted by Arainach

That "Huge Step Up" is a bunch of resampling 'crystallization' bullshit that I consider a negative rather than a positive. I'll stick to my original music, kthx.

Exactly, I'd rather have perfect sound reproduction than cpu usage speed up. Also I've decoded 5.1 and 6.1 audio, and got cpu usage low enough that I could decode DivX and XviD without a frame rate drop.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Really though what sound card produces substantially better quality than even a lowly Soundblaster 16? Out of every soundcard I've ever used, none. It's the quality of the speakers, not (unless your sound card really sucks) the capabilites of the card. In fact all my speakers and headphones couldn't even test the quality of the DAC between any modern soundcard, they're not sensitive (or expensive) enough for me to distinguish that.

I was speaking idiomatically.