FYI: Your FRAME RATES and your SOUND CARD

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Even +15% isn't a very substantial boost. If you suffer from a bad framerate (say 20), +15% means you'll be still stuck with 23fps, which is approximately the same.
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Well, according to MS there is an increase in performance with a dedicated sound card.

Here is a quote from THIS article:

"A small investment in a high-performance sound card can vastly improve your computer's sound as well as boost its overall performance. Music, games, DVDs, and Web audio will all sound more three-dimensional and fully present everywhere in the room with a good sound card. That's the first reason to upgrade. But a boost in overall computer performance? That's the less obvious benefit of a good sound card. Good cards boost PC performance because they feature small processors of their own. They actually share the computing work in the sound department, instead of channeling data to the speakers. The less time your processor has to spend crunching sound data, the more it can do without bogging down or dropping other tasks."

Now, while I have not yet found any benchmarks to post I wonder why there are so many claims in the sources I have no reason not to trust that a dedicated sound card actually improves your PCs overall performance. I figure that if performance gains were negligible sources such as MS and CGW would hardly instist that the gains exist.

What I will do is this: I have on-board 6.1 card on my motherboard. And I have a stand-alone card. I will test this myself and post the results. My PC may not reflect the typical picture, but still.

As for the difference of 3 FPS - which is irrelevant - as I pointed out before it still matters a great deal. People often spend a lot of money on aftermarket coolers and what not to overclock their GPUs and CPUs to get the same 10-15% boost in overall system performance. If you add another 10-15% by installing a high-qyality dedicated sound card you will get a 20-30% total increase I hope you are not going to tell me that 30% is nothing even though your min 20 FPS only goes up to 26.3 FPS as a result of a 30% performance gain... *sighs* you should also consider 45 FPS becoming 50 or 60 which is a major improvement as many shooter players will confirm.

The whole idea of my original post (though I did not state it clearly) was that by overlooking a dedicated sound card people are robbing themselves of some performance. I don't think this can be disputed.

In combination, tweaking OS, RAM timings, CPU/GPU clocks, using a dedicated sound card etc. will give you substantial overall performance gains. 5% here, 10% there.. you know. So I do not quite understand why some people insist that gains from using a dedicated sound card are irrelevant.
 
Thanks for the link. I figured if we lambasted the idea for long enough somebody would come up with a supporting link.

Alright, so with my rig I have Logitech Z5500 speakers. Are they of high enough quality that a sound card will make much of a difference? I am not a huge audiophile, but I do listen to a lot of music and play games. My current onboard sound is (I believe) 7.1 which is more channels that my speakers have anyways. I don't have any complaints currently, but then again, I have never used a sound card before.
 
That Logitech 5.1 setup looks decent. I checked the specs. However, SNR (signal to noise ratio) is 93.5 dB. This is not very good as 100 dB or greater is considered acceptable (as in "you hear little or no noise").

If your motherboard's SNR is low as well, say 90 dB or below - which is likely - the combination of your speakers and the integrated sound card = low quality sound plagued by interference which will be especially noticeable if your soundtrack is not very noisy (read classical vs. heavy metal).

The quality of your sound will definitely improve quite dramatically with a better sound card which whill fix the motherboard SNR problem and may compensate for the low SNR of your speakers.

As for 7.1, this is actually a marketing gimmick as there is no such a thing as true 7.1 as the 6th and 7th channel are usually not independent but rather the same signal split between two speakers. So, you are not losing much by sticking with your 5.1
 
Sounds good, I bought those speakers because they were relatively cheap (about $300 CAD) and pretty loud. I'll check out the sound card forum for some advice about which sound card would be good to get. Also, I listen to both Heavy Metal and Classical (which are musically very similar), even bands like Apocalyptica which play metal music on cellos :) .
 
Dammit, I've never heard about it until now. Just checked a few Google videos... pretty damn cool. I think we have a new favorite 😀

How cool is THIS :?: :!:
 
I used to listen to them more about 5 or so years ago, but yeah they are awesome. I saw them play live about 6 months ago and it was one of the best show I have ever been to (and I go to about 1 every month). They are way better live than they are on CD (and they are still awesome on CD).
 
Poeple its not just offloading work from the CPU that work has to get in and out of the CPU (IE bandwidth) and please people if you dont own a sound card dont say there is no benifit other then sound quality... speaking from actual experience here BF2 does have a difference in frame rates from turning it on and off. Now for the boo hooers yes you could spend money on a better graphics card and get waaaayyy more improvement on FPS then FPS from a sound card (wich kinda makes sense since the sound card doesnt do graphics.... duuhhhh) There are more benifits to a sound card then simply games too ! I guess no one listens to music on there PC's lol If you spend any amount of time listening to music on your PC and have decent speakers INVEST in a sound card (even a cheaper one) I wouldnt recomend anyone get the same sound card I did (Fatal1ty) as its expensive ! But for me it was a personal decision and I dont regret it one bit, I enjoy it every day :)
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dead on!
i use the computer for so much more than games...and ANY offboards sound is better....my onboard (on my k8v se) clicks and pops all the time...even a sound blaster live gives great results.....Hell even the newest onboard cards dont match the first sound blaster live in most cases...
 
I bet if I took my sound card and installed it in these peoples machines that say "Buying a sound card is a waste of money" for a week and then came back a week later to take it back they would cry.

Its one of those things you dont even know your missing out untill you have it... I guess it would be like feeding lobster to a homeless person for a week. Sure they would love it and it tastes great but what about the week after ? Is it worse to know your missing something or not to know....
 
dead on!
i use the computer for so much more than games...and ANY offboards sound is better....my onboard (on my k8v se) clicks and pops all the time...even a sound blaster live gives great results.....Hell even the newest onboard cards dont match the first sound blaster live in most cases...
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Actually I prefer my onboard to my old SB live. The SB used to pop and make extremely high pitch noises at odd times. But it was a good card in its time.
 
odd.....it was always clear as a bell for me(and it was the value one :) ).... hell it still is...in another computer....

Its one of those things you dont even know your missing out untill you have it
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thats like my core2 without raid...it was painful.....i mean my A64 3200 was owning it....at least in response to my every click and load times....had to re raid in 1 day....going to get my fast(er) drives back soon....
 
Nice post, but I think if fell a bit short. (I'm thinking of doing this very thing in another forum I belong to.) I was hoping for something you had done yourself to prove this to be true. I was disappointed to not see any testing done.

I don't think you really NEED a sound card anymore. I remember the doom days were there wasn't any onboard sound, and you have to run an AWE32. I can remember having to install a card to get playable frame rates. As has already been talked about, there are really only two reasons to have a sound card anymore. First, your ears are good enough to hear the lower quality sound provided by onboard sound. (mine are not, I don't have this problem.) Second, you are a speed freak, who has finished overclocking/tweaking everything else in your system, and you don't mind spending $60-$200+ on something that will get you another 5% increase in speed. As long as people keep coming to me with only $1000, and want something that will get them playing Prey, I won't be suggesting a soundcard.
 
Actually, some time this weekend I will do my own testing. StrangeStranger (who's PC is totally different from mine and more powerful) indicated in a PM to me that he might be interested in doing some tests of his own.

I will be using Aquamark 3 Commercial Plus which allows use of various sound settings.

He has a full version of 3DMark03 with sound capability.

It frustrates me that some people demand that I support my post by my own test results though I am sure that CGW guys did quite a bit of testing before they published the article on which my post was based.

Perhaps, instead of complaining more people should join me and StrangeStranger and help test this on different configurations using different benchmarks? No?
 
G’day I’m from aus here and I’ve been reading from THG for quite sometime now , I often see some of you wankers say crap about having a sound card doesn’t improve at all which is a load of BS. I recently brought a XFI and I play games at 12801024 and there is improvement in my FPS. Even my GF could notice the difference. I often wonder if any of you guys have even owned a sound card before you say your 2cents. It’s like you have a voice with nothing to back it up. You don’t even address people’s problems correctly in some forms, you just say buy this…hardly anything else….Anyhow this is my first say in THG and the whole form deal.

P.S I'm only 21 and i can even notice how full of crap some of you guys are.
 
I've always used SoundBlaster cards in the few PCs I've owned over the years. Onboard sound has always been kinda crappy to me. However, I think performance loss would be small if using a very fast single core CPU, or any dual core CPU. I'm guessing the 15% loss in performance would be for older systems with slow CPUs.

Anyway, onboard sound is good in a pinch, or for people on a tight budget. But I think a discrete sound card is the way to go especially when listening to music.
 
So I assume that onboard sound can vary greatly? I still have an Asus nForce board (Athlon XP 2500+) with 5.1. Now I'm sure that isn't using a DSP but would it be considered taking the strain off the CPU? What about something newer like the nForce4? And now we have the nForce 570 and 590 mobo's. Surely those are no longer using the CPU for sound processing?
 
As for the difference of 3 FPS - which is irrelevant - as I pointed out before it still matters a great deal. People often spend a lot of money on aftermarket coolers and what not to overclock their GPUs and CPUs to get the same 10-15% boost in overall system performance. If you add another 10-15% by installing a high-qyality dedicated sound card you will get a 20-30% total increase
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People who spend a lot of money on overclocking represent a minority of geeks. Most people either don't know about all those beautiful ways of wasting time and money, or figure out that money is better invested on one important upgrade from time to time than small, sometimes psychological and often risky "tweaks".

What bothers me with your initial statement is that it sounds like "no wonder you're getting bad framerates, you're using onboard sound". That's like saying "no wonder you're getting bad framerates, you're not even overclocking the hell out of your rig".

Of course if you're out to build the most powerful system money can buy, get a sound card without hesitation; but as someone said earlier on this thread, I'm not going to reccomend investing any sort of money on a sound card for mainstream computers.
 
Why are you guys using synthetic benchies? Why not use real games? This is my weekend today and tomorrow, and I believe I have an old SB 5.1 card laying around. If I get the chance, I'll throw it in my computer tomorrow and test with Farcry. (today is way to busy...)

Something else that just occured to me. The difference will vary depending on how you have sound setup. If you don't normally enable EAX or higher levels of sound effects, then adding a sound card won't help much.

As for the new guy, I'm over 21yo, and don't find the need to insult people. Give it a couple more years and you should be there.
 
well i used to use onboard sound on a Gigabyte GA K8NS pro mobo....i added a Creative Audigy 2cz sound card and the sound quality using a decent pair of Yamaha MSP3 active monitors is neglegable to zero improvement.

i have gained about 2fps more in doom 3, 5fps more in CSS source, and about 6 fps more in quake 3 using the same gfx drivers.
EAX was not possible on my onboard sound because it didnt support it.

on a modern pc with a fast CPU say AMD 3400 which is what i have, buying a soundcard in the hope to improve FPS in games is only going to give you neglegable performance increase....and sound quality is also neglegable.

maybe in the old days of 500Mz cpus would it actually give you a significant increase in performance...

System Specs
Gigabyte K8ns pro
Audigy 2 CZ
AMD Athlon 3400+
Gainward Bliss 7800gs 512MB (agp) (7800gt core)
2GB kingston ddr400
 
Finally, someone is over exaggerating the benefits of a dedicated soundcard. The only real benefit gained from a dedicated soundcard is the improved sound quality.
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Heyyou27, I hate to bother you, but is your image a scene from the Jonestown massacre?

Off subject I know. My sincere apoligies, but I must know.

High regards,
Howard
 
mmmmmm 15% seems a little hopefull , when i upgraded to hardware sound there was no noticible differance in gameplay FPS running sound on high/EAX.

I dont waste my time on benchmarks as i dont think there worth it so i couldnt comment on them.........
 
So I assume that onboard sound can vary greatly? I still have an Asus nForce board (Athlon XP 2500+) with 5.1. Now I'm sure that isn't using a DSP but would it be considered taking the strain off the CPU? What about something newer like the nForce4? And now we have the nForce 570 and 590 mobo's. Surely those are no longer using the CPU for sound processing?
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To tell you the truth, I never really bothered keeping up-to-date regarding onboard sound advances. I do know that a handful of premium motherboards have a Soundblaster Audigy chip on it. That would be the besy onboard sound you can get since the Audigy chip will do all the sound processing.

I believe Intel's onboard sound, Azilla, and whatever onboard sound the nForce boards are using still are bound to the CPU for processing power. As I stated before, as long as the CPU is fast, the impact of onboard vs. discrete sound will be small.
 
Buy a soundcard if you are an audiophile and can tell the difference, or do any kind of realtime signal processing / audio editing.

If you listen to internet radio or crap Mp3's encoded at 128 kbps, which a good deal of them are, you aren't going to notice a difference or care. If you have a nice sound setup and listen to well-mastered audio (including well produced gaming environmental soundtracks) there will absolutely be a difference.

The original poster was somewhat misleading in regard to the SNR in computer audio. The signal-to-noise ratio of your soundcard is based on the bit depth, which when higher keeps cumulative rounding to a minimum. 16bit soundcards by nature offer a logical 96db of dynamic range, but why this is a a stupid criterion to judge by is because generally recording studio's can't do much better than 60 db SNR anyway. Although it is discretely a part of it, 24-bit souncards aren't generally better because of the SNR.

Speakers are a completely different subject, as the SNR refers to the ratio between the noise floor and an reference level, which sadly lacks standards, making company's claims somewhat uninformative. What is much more important in my opinion when purchasing speakers is the frequency response, totaly harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion, and of course, the average output power.

Making the argument that today's processors can handle the calculations necessary in audio is always a weak one. There always comes a point where processing demand from applications starts to match processing power made available by the processors. When applications become more demanding you don't want processing power caught up in something it wasn't meant to do, plain and simple.

EDIT: Also:

So I assume that onboard sound can vary greatly? I still have an Asus nForce board (Athlon XP 2500+) with 5.1. Now I'm sure that isn't using a DSP but would it be considered taking the strain off the CPU? What about something newer like the nForce4? And now we have the nForce 570 and 590 mobo's. Surely those are no longer using the CPU for sound processing?
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If it has any onboard audio at all it has DSP. It's the only way digital information can be converted into audio information useful to your speakers.
 
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