Sound off = significant FPS boost?

[jermin]

My sound card is Audigy2 ZS. Yesterday after I turn it off in Device Mananger, I got a 8 avg. fps boost in TBD track of IL2-1946. I just couldn't believe it cuz I've been told that A2 ZS was so powerful that this card even can improve frame rates! I also got big fps improvement in CoD2. Then I found my Audigy and X800 share IRQ 19. So I move the card around and finally seperate them apart:

IRQ 18 Audigy 2 ZS
IRQ 19 OHCI Complaint IEEE 1394 Host Controller
IRQ 19 X800

However, the result is the same. And I've heard somewhere that the creative auto-update or EAX update is causing such a problem. I don't even have a clue on all of these. Gurus, please help me!

My system is:

Sempron 2400+ @ 2.1G
EPoX 8RDA3I PRO
ATI X800XT

[stormy]

I don't see where there is a problem. If you run with the sound disabled of course the FPS is going to go up, it doesn't matter whether you are using onboard sound or a sound card.

Try running 3D Mark 03 with the sound tests. There are three tests and the only difference between them is the amount of sound processing. The first test has no sound, the second has 24 sounds, and the last has 60 sounds; and the FPS goes down after each test.

[scheherazade]

Originally Posted by jermin

My sound card is Audigy2 ZS. Yesterday after I turn it off in Device Mananger, I got a 8 avg. fps boost in TBD track of IL2-1946. I just couldn't believe it cuz I've been told that A2 ZS was so powerful that this card even can improve frame rates! I also got big fps improvement in CoD2. Then I found my Audigy and X800 share IRQ 19. So I move the card around and finally seperate them apart:

IRQ 18 Audigy 2 ZS
IRQ 19 OHCI Complaint IEEE 1394 Host Controller
IRQ 19 X800

However, the result is the same. And I've heard somewhere that the creative auto-update or EAX update is causing such a problem. I don't even have a clue on all of these. Gurus, please help me!

My system is:

Sempron 2400+ @ 2.1G
EPoX 8RDA3I PRO
ATI X800XT

The audogy 2 will improve fps. ... realtive to AC96 onboard sound.

No audio always has the best fps.

-scheherazade

[ROBSCIX]

Dedicated soundcard dont' improve FPS. When you play a game that has EAX openAL etc a onboard soundcard has no dedicated chip to handle these routines. -so you naturally get a drop in FPS. When you use a Audigy 2 or 4 or X-fi they have hardware that handles these routines. FPS is not added, it's just when you use these cards no FPS will drop becasue of no hardware support. Atleast this is how I understand it.

[alg7_munif]

When you use sound cards with hardware acceleration, fps drop will be less than no hardware acceleration. No sound is the fastest because no processing is needed at all, you can't get any faster than no sound.

[jermin]

But some of my friends didn't get fps drop on their rig.

Would you please test it yourself to see whether there is a change?

[Terrorizor]

theres too many variables for a test like this, driver versions, settings in games, in control panels, in windows, different onboard codecs, different systems, etc etc check your sound settings and make sure you have the most current driver you can for your card,could be cuz you have some sound qualities enabled where as someone who doesnt will take less of a hit in games and cpu usage, if your friends have an x-fi and have everything like eax, cmss 3-d, hardware dolby decoder, and such disabled then its pretty close to no sound at all, things like on an audigy you can run everything in 16-bit 48hz audio, lame, but you can and its almost no hit there either.not to mention processor power, memory bandwidth, memory amounts and system configurations , all these things can make drastic differences

another thing is, if you came from onboard sound and went to an audigy2 you must uninstal drivers to old onboard and disable in bios, use driver cleaner in safe mode to clean out hidden files and regestry entries for realtek, nforce audio,soundmax etc etc and then instal your card and boot up fresh with the latest driver ready to instal.

[jermin]

See this post:
http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...963#1561038963.

There are many people like him in that forum if you would like to search. But only he resolved the problem. But I don't quite understand what he was talking about in his last post. If any of you has encounter the auto-update problem, pls tell me. Thanx.

[jermin]

OK, guys. After I turned down Hardware Acceleration from Full to Standard, everything was OK. But why? Is my card to powerful that I should downgrade it or there is actually something wrong with my card? And will it affect the sound quality? I found I can't switch to EAX3 any more in CoD2.