Hello everybody ! This post is for those of you who are surprised of the low FPS in DOOM-3 and having a decent PC ( powerful CPU and lots of RAM and High and Graphics -- BUT -- ONBOARD or even CHEAP SOUND CARD -- meaning everything below Audigy or SBLive! 5.1 - or any other soundcard which is lacking good direct-x 9 sound-acceleration ). ====================================== Now guyz, I hope you all realize that a score as low as 22 fps in the timedemo in doom3 combined with a 5900FX card is a little suspect. Then look at the guy`s system specs ;-) FX 5900 with :::::::: check this out :::::::::: ONBOARD SOUND... To better understand what I am talking about, let me tell tell you what happened a couple of days ago... ... well a friend of mine called and asked me if I could borrow him my soundcard ( a SB Audigy ) for some party he is making... ... .I said OK, he came to my place and we took out the Audigy from my system.....after a while, we have the ideea to check out Doom3, because he never saw it before... so .... so I fired up the game... and SHOCK .... it was moving PAINFULLY SLOW... going below 20 fps almost all of the time....I was a very surprised .. anyway, after the guy has left, I had run the timedemo ... and SHOCK no. 2 : 26 FPS... ... imagine.. 26 FPS !!! and before taking out the SB Audigy I had an average of 44 FPS !!!! So basically what happened it was that my system remained with the onboard Audio of the NFORCE2 chipset, which was unable to cope with the number of sound-channels the game Doom3 requests on "High-Detail" settings, and consumed the CPU-resources, slowing down the game, BIG TIME... Bottom line is... IF YOU WANT TO HAVE DECENT FPS IN DOOM 3, YOU WILL ALSO NEED A GOOD, DIRECT X 9-ACCELERATED SOUND-CARD ( not only graphics and lots of RAM and CPU horsepower ) as a "software"-only, not decently accelerated soundcard can slow down Doom 3 the same way as a bad graphics card... P.S. running "timedemo demo1" does render all the sound, it is just "off", you cant`t hear it... and the fps-drop is also very visible in-game...
i was under the impression that DOOM3 sound was CPU dependant and it didnt matter what sound card you had. i guess it just goes to show.
I've found that with a lot of games. I have an Audigy 2, yet I often set the sound detail to medium or low to boost FPS because I can hardly tell the difference.
Provided you have at least a 2 GHz CPU, the sound should be a non issue (and should perform basically the same on all sould solutions - it is this way by design). Your lack of FPS is most likely due to another factor.
Excellent find, thevoid. Although you stumbled upon it unintentionally. Your info may help others with sound issues, using onboard audio.
Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers! Drivers are everything lol update your audio drivers!
My nForce soundstorm only strains the framerates when rendering about 60 sounds (as shown in 3dMark03).
yea, i'm still trying to figure out wether onboard sound affects performance. i didn't notice anything when i was using my onboard and went to my audigy 2zs.
That's because the SoundStorm APU has the lowest CPU utilization out of the lot. There is an article on Toms (Yeah, I know) about it, comparing frame rates between all the different sound cards, and yes it does make a difference. With onboard sound, except SS, the CPU has to use some cycles to provide it, but if the card has it's own Audio Processing Unit, then that takes most of the load off the CPU, and thus you get better FPS. (I had a quick look and I can't find the article I was on about but you might have better luck.)
this is just bull****. as someone said, fix your drivers dude. i have a ****ty c-media onboard and my performance is excellent and excellent for me is not 30 but way over 30fps, its hovering around 50fps as average when running fraps and logging the framerate. and im running in 800x600 and medium quality + all options on. onboard apu can have an impact in some games compared to a real soundcard but even in those games the difference would not be 20frames+ as you got, not even close.
SBLive.....VALUE here,,,and DooM 3 Kicks with video and sound...If you use SB anything, use KX drivers,,,,you shall see ! Sorry dude, you found out just how bad your system needs audio drivers..and if you had an audigy2, or a 2ZS in there and you got 44 FPS, just think, If you ditched the Creative drivers, and somethin tells me you were using the ones that XP installs by default,,you would really see an increase in frames...get a 6800series vid card too, if you really want to see DooM 3....................good luck grasshoppah ! ;-)
Hey, Toxic Worrier the fact that you think I am using the "generic" drivers which WindowsXP installs by default for the Audigy is nothing more than a preconception of yours, and I could take it very well as an insult as it suggests that I would not know that every driver ( be that sound / video or anything else ) which comes with XP is just to get the respective device working... and nothing more .... Anyway... ... in the meantime I sold the Audigy to the guy who borrowed it and I took myself an Audigy2... intalled the drivers which came with it... and... guess what... back to ~44 FPS on that Doom3-timedemo ;-) In the meantime ofcourse I had the chance to experiment with the NFORCE2-MCP, I have installed the newest drivers from NVIDIA... AND PLAYED DOOM 3.... and I can tell you guyz 100% that the framerate in DOOM3 drops big-time when using NVIDIA`s ONBOARD sound (MCP)... Going below 20 FPS most of the time, which is NOT happening now AT ALL with the Audigy2, which ultimately means that YES, the soundcard DOES MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE ... Again you can say that your Doom3 performance is awesome with your excellent onboard sound, yet "you" are running on an FX5200, so Doom3 gets bottlenecked by your graphics card, so you won`t ever feel your "onboard-audio-bottleneck"... ( don`t take this personal, I just remember there was a poster on this thread who said he has excellent performance with his onboard sound, but yet he was running an FX5200 and medium details, which is FAR OUT for his config ofcourse )... OK so cheers, everybody, and ... it was just a thought that might help, but if all you want is to argue ... I`m sorry.... but I won`t get into it...
there is obviously something that intefear with your onboard sound config and therefor you get low framerates when using the onboard audio. i mean 20fps+ just because you change soundcard? yeah sure in your dreams maybe if you read peoples posts here (or anywhere on the net) you will see that people have great performance with onboard sound. man even john carmack have said that you wont get much of a performance boost if you use an audigy card since the game uses the cpu to process the audio and not the apu on your audigy etc.
