How much does a proper soundcard help with fps?

Discussion in 'General Hardware' started by SUnSpot, Jun 4, 2011.

  1. Agonist

    Agonist Ancient Guru

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    I cant even tell you the difference of awesome even my cheap xfi made using software sound wise in dirt 1. I gained maybe 3fps once I went to a quad but lost 5 fps on my dual core. I am in shocked how much better the game sounded with the soundcard vs onboard.
     
  2. TheHunter

    TheHunter Banned

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    ^
    yea me too, i had p4 when i played Dirt1 and with onboard sound all on lowest no hw and got around 30-35fps, with xfi it jumped to min ~37fps and 40-45fps + 10xbetter sound all on highest.. When i tried it on my quad fps jumped allot from 45fps to 70-75fps and even then hw helped with extra fps.. Other games didn't see such boost but there was a boost non the less in hw eax5 (openAL).

    not all game see it, but allot do and that's a difference + way better sound, nuff said.

    And besides F1 2010 isn't really a great example anyway.. hw sound is kept to min.



    Troll on, troll..
     
  3. sykozis

    sykozis Ancient Guru

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    Got my first "computer" in 1987, which ran Dos 3.0.....built my first computer in 1994, which ran Dos5.22 and Win3.1 on an Intel 386SX.....installed my first Creative product in 1993....which very promptly failed. I've been selling computers since 1998.....

    Now, I'm starting to wonder at this point what age really has to do with anything.... I've seen countless BSOD's directly caused by Creative's drives...and I've replaced more creative components than most on these forums have owned.... Quite frankly, from MY experience, Creative sells nothing but garbage....always has and always will. Creative is also the only company I've used product from, that has supplied me with a driver disc containing "incompatible" drivers.... I just love installing a brand new, retail sound card, then popping in the driver disc to receive a message telling me that no compatible device can be found.. Way to go Creative.... Got 2 "XtremeAudio" cards that both suffered from this "mishap".....both retail packages, neither of which came packaged with compatible drivers. Neither card managed to work longer than 7 days.... In fact, told the wife if I hear a single pop or crackle from my speakers again, I'm throwing every sound card in the house in the trash can and ordering this: http://cgi.ebay.com/AOpen-AW724-PCI...718?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2310b4f3d6
    That's the last sound card I installed for a previous client. 2 Years after installing it (installed in 2002), unlike the Creative garbage before it, it was still working flawlessly. He's using an mAudio card now because his house was broken into and cleaned out in 2004....
     
  4. TheHunter

    TheHunter Banned

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    ^
    amateur/improper driver installs is what makes creative driver bsod. Doesn't matter if you know hw for 20yrs lol


    I only got it 3-4 times in whole 4-5years owning this card, and every time it was my own fault, well more of pax suite + sometimes a mix of both pax and normal creative driver.. Or if you overwrite a driver this can be a bad idea too.

    Only Creative or only DK modded or only PAX is fine, but from all 3 DK is the best.
     

  5. viren

    viren Ancient Guru

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    It doesn't matter if you use onboard sound or pci/pci-e sound card. All that matters is a stable set of drivers to drive it.
     
  6. The X-Fi Xtreme Audio you had problems with two of them not supplying the correct Drivers is because those cards had no Processing Unit on them. They were "false advertisements" basically.
     
  7. Anarion

    Anarion Ancient Guru

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    It's as good example as Dirt 1 (except F1 has way more cars).
     
  8. UnclePappi

    UnclePappi Banned

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    I've been following hardware sound for the last 6-7 yrs and yes it is just about dead. Do I care? No. Honestly I just want the best effects and sound quality and don't care where or how I get it. BFBC2 designers said that the creative chip was enough back in the BF2 days but their needs have actually outstretched the chips capability. Does anybody think this has anything to do with BFBC2 being a CPU heavy game? Of course it does but so does the advanced software physics. Hardware sound is extremely hard to compare performance against software for the simple fact that when you enable hardware sound it's not a 1:1 comparison. Hardware sound used to have a **** ton more effects and voices versus software, and it was noticeable. It's like trying to compare performance on Crysis with a 580gtx and all settings maxed versus an 8800gt with settings on low/medium. The 8800GT may even end up with higher fps but it's not a 1:1 comparison. BUT, that's for the most part over now as "some" devs are now pushing sound farther than an xfi chip can even go. BFBC2 is a prime example, there is so many sound effects going on that an xfi chip would choke, bad thing is that CPU usage has gone WAY up on games like that. I've heard that BFBC2 sound can use up damn near a full core from a quad and so can the physics.

    So really it's not as cut and dry as "sound card will raise fps". Like most have said look for the sound quality when purchasing a card and look at what games you'll be playing. You like to revisit older games with EAX and semi-modern games that use hardware get an xfi chip based card. Only looking to the future? Get whatever has the best sound quality with the features and support you want. Or stick with your POS onboard that sounds like a cat being scraped with a cheese grater. haha
     
  9. sykozis

    sykozis Ancient Guru

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    Now you're trolling.... If the manufacturer supplies the WRONG driver disc, it's hardly the user or tech's fault when they don't install. And to put things into perspective....I'd installed HUNDREDS of Creative cards..... And when you're dealing with professional clients....in my case DJ's and Medical Offices....you don't use "PAX" or any other "modified" driver....you use the drivers provided by the hardware makers. Personally, if Yamaha were still supporting their AW724 Audio Processor, I'd never touch another creative product.

    I used to configure systems for DJ's, Graphics Artists, Medical Offices and a local speed shop....

    Whether they are "real" X-Fi cards or not....the manufacturer has a duty to provide the PROPER drivers for their products.
     
  10. UnclePappi

    UnclePappi Banned

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    Wanted to add that alot of devs are pushing sound to the side and it's becoming an afterthought. This sucks for us and I'm pretty sure that if hardware sound was huge like the old days this wouldn't be happening but it's just how things are these days and we have to deal with it. For most people it's "good enough" so the devs aren't advancing it(besides a few). I don't know about you guys but anytime I'm in a game playing surround sound on my nice speakers and I hear something behind me and turn around(in the game lol) and realize the game has misplaced the sound.. I just shake my head and wonder if my xfi woulda done the occlusion better than their crap software sound. Meh I'm rambling.... somebody needs to make an equivalent to havoc or physx but for sound. Something that gets pushed
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2011

  11. sykozis

    sykozis Ancient Guru

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    Creative is working on it....as well as a multi-core audio processor....but I'm sure they'll screw something up as usual....
     
  12. I absolutely agree with you. I was just explaining a possible reason why they sent the wrong disc, then again, they should know what Software goes with what Hardware.
     
  13. sykozis

    sykozis Ancient Guru

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    They should....but not always the case. I've run into occassions where the wrong driver was posted on their own site for the XtremeAudio, which with proper QA that wouldn't happen.

    I contacted Creative almost 2 years ago asking about connecting my XtremeGamer or XtremeAudio cards to my GTX275 via SPDIF. Even though the XtremeGamer has a pin header nicely labeled as "SPDIF"....Creative claims that none of their products has ever supported SPDIF connectivity. If that's the case, why print "SPDIF" by the pin header for their drivebay garbage?
     
  14. TheHunter

    TheHunter Banned

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    ^
    now you're trolling because it isn't working for you, well tough luck, been there done that.

    by Dirt1 its way more sophisticated, install it and you will see. Even Dirt2 has better but not much as Dirt1 (speaking of hw dsp enhancement and eax fx).
     
  15. Anarion

    Anarion Ancient Guru

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    I've played them all and I have Dirt 2 and I do not quite agree. One could say that sound card lowers your FPS, especially in Dirt 2. Also, my card even has this fancy X-RAM thing.

    But in any case...

    With hardware acceleration:
    [​IMG]

    With software processing:
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2011

  16. TheHunter

    TheHunter Banned

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    I said Dirt1 sw sound is more demanding then any recent Codemasters game that includes Dirt2. No wonder it runs faster in Dirt2 or F1 2010 or Dirt3 doh..


    its the same here and it sounds like crap compared to other two openAL modes..

    (8xqaa, 4xssaa, 16xaf, rest maxed ingame)
    Rapature3D
    [​IMG]

    HW
    [​IMG]

    SW
    [​IMG]

    Like i said try Dirt1 sw vs hw and tell again:infinity: and it doesn't matter if its an old game - it has more sophisticated fx in sw/hw then any current codemasters game., by sophisticated i mean dsp and eax effects usage to the max (EAX5 HD) maybe even x-ram idk about that atm, but i have 64mb too lol:nerd:

    But then again running in software mode on dedicated hardware won't make such a difference as running it on onboard sound.. and i ran on onboard sound when i played Dirt1 in software mode - this puts even more stress on cpu (esp. if its slower).


    And this is the whole point in this thread, does onboard sound cripple performance and if external sound makes a difference and yes it does.

    That's it from me, im out of this thread cya
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2011
  17. TruMutton_200Hz

    TruMutton_200Hz Guest

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    I don't know about AMD but on my Intel based laptop each and every PCIe port is listed as a separate device in Device Manager. Anyway though, alot more depends on the device driver of the soundcard itself so it really doesn't matter except for the fact a PCI card still taxes the PCI bridge.
    That depends on the motherboard design. Page 12 of the X58 UD3's manual (note 3) says the second PCIe x8 slot shares bandwidth with the second PCIe x16 slot so that the second PCIe x16 slot will operate in x8 mode if the second PCIe x8 slot has an expansion card. The second PCIe x8 slot is where you'd normally put a soundcard into - because both PCIe x1 slots are so close to that heatsink and the CPU socket it would be impossible to put the soundcard into either one of those instead. I know you could use a PCIe x1 riser to work your way around this but with a full height soundcard this usually wouldn't work so you'd have to mess up the cable management by routing a PCIe x1 extension cable all the way across both vidcards via someplace between the side of the motherboard and the back of the case, which IMO would nevertheless be a bad idea. I also know the fps difference between x16 x16 and x16 x8 is so small it can not be noticed - not even while gaming at high resolutions AFAIK. However, on a triple monitor setup things can indeed look different in some texture and AA heavy games.
    Like I already said (twice), the differences are too small to be noticed nor to be considered - but there are always exceptions for people to still argue about when they get bored (myself and especially me included). lol Personally, instead I would worry about how much the graphics quality degrades as a direct result from setting the audio quality too high - and vice versa. Either that, or buy a console. lol Now let me go and wipe that dust off of my old and molested Roland UA-100. :)
     
    Last edited: Jun 6, 2011
  18. UnclePappi

    UnclePappi Banned

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    hmmm, I'll have to check this out
     
  19. kanej2007

    kanej2007 Guest

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    So after all this we conclude that having an onboard card or not makes little or no difference?

    It's a useless thread. If someone wants more fps he upgrades his cpu or gpu, not his soundcard...

    Why would someone upgrade his soundcard for 2 or 3fps if he can change his gpu and get 30+ fps???
     
  20. deltatux

    deltatux Guest

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    Hmmm, guess gaming boards do that since on mainstream boards (both AMD and Intel) which I work with very often, PCIe isn't shared. Maybe they wanted to add more bells and whistles and had the motherboard activate lanes on demand (PCIe in itself can't share resources, you can however, activate/deactivate lanes on command though. Each lane is separate from one another).

    As for the device manager, PCIe can be detected but to the underlying OS, especially in the programming view, PCIe is logically the same as PCI. That's the only thing that makes PCIe part of the PCI family. Other than that PCIe is completely different than PCI since PCIe is a point-to-point serial interconnect while PCI is a parallel arbitration bus system.

    deltatux
     

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