onboard sound and CPU performance

Titanion

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I read an article last week about onboard sound and CPU performance. How big of an impact does onboard sound have on a cpu? I have a Soyo Dragon Ultra KT333 running an Athlon XP 1900+. My onboard sound is C-Media 6-channel 8738.

I think the onboard sound is better than a Sound Blaster Live Value card I have, but I would likely be happy with the Soundblaster if it increased performance a lot.



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TKH

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All current on board sound except nForce2 SoundStorm utilises more CPU resource simply becasue they need CPU to emulate the APU. C-Media may sounds better than Live Value but the drawback is that the CPU resource usage is so big that you'll expect a 11-13% relative performance drop.

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Crashman

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Live! series is a system hog, when CPU's where half as powerfull as they are now it used about 10-15% of system power! Now you have twice the power, but the onboard stuff uses 10-15%! So given those two pieces of information, I'd say you're looking at a 5-7% performance loss due to onboard audio.

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Titanion

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I have that Soundblaster Live Value in my second computer, and it needs all the cpu power it can get, running a K6-2+ 550 overclocked to 600 Mhz. Sounds like I should take that thing out and put an old SB16 in there...

<font color=red><b>To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.</b></font color=red>
John Milton, <i>Paradise Lost</i>, II 262-263
 

Titanion

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So is the advice to put the SB LV in the Athlon XP 1900+ system (and disable the onboard C-Media) and then put an old SB16 in the K6-2+ system?

<font color=red><b>To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n.</b></font color=red>
John Milton, <i>Paradise Lost</i>, II 262-263
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Yes, if that's what you would want to do. Didn't you say you prefered the sound of the onboard chip though? You'll have to way out the benifits (a 5-7% gain in CPU performance with things like games) against the consequences.

<font color=blue>Watts mean squat if you don't have quality!</font color=blue>