Soundcard & resource usage

[MusicMonkey5555]

I have a http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16813153081&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-RSSDailyDeals-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3818627&SID=

which says it has 6 channel audio, but there are not external plugs for the front, back, sub. So it sounds like just the chip supports it?

I want 5.1 sound for a CarPC and as you can see the chip is a low power slower chip so I don't want to use much if any CPU, but from what I can see all the USB 5.1 cards just convert from digital to analog audio and so all the audio processing is done on the CPU. Is this the case for all USB sound cards? Is it the case for all sound cards? Is there anyway to utilize the VIA VT1708A so the cpu isn't used.

Also anything I get I would like to be as low power as possible. If there is no way around a 5.1 usb soundcard using 5 +/- 0.25 volts (usb power only) then I could probably go up to 12 volts max.

Any suggestions, info or help would be great.

 

[saaiello]

Well 1 st even with the onboard via chip it still uses up some of the CPU to process the sound in the picture from newegg you can see it came with a few expansion slots and one of them is a spdif connector so thats the only way you can get the 6 channel off there im assuming. But either way onboard or USB will eat up the CPU no way around that any chance you can use the PCI slot for a small soundcard?

 

[MusicMonkey5555]

S/PDIF? I don't think there is one on there if you are referring to the thing on the far right in this image. That is a RGB HD video. Here is the full page on the board: http://www.jetwaycomputer.com/J7F5M.html they have a manual as PDF to download as well and I didn't see any SPDIF the only audio is the line out and then an expansion for another RCA out (white & red).

The only thing that may be HD audio is the optional HDMI, but not sure what version it is.

So is all the audio processing always done on the cpu? Cause I understand some processing has to be done, but I though the majority was done on the sound card. People where reporting like 10-15 or even up to 50% of their cpus on some of the USB sound cards and that is what I don't want is the entire thing lagging down to process sound or have studders in sound because the cpu is being used by a process.

I may be able to fit a small sound card in the pci slot, I will see, but it is already a really tight fit. Here is the case: http://store.mp3car.com/VoomPC_2_CarPC_Enclosure_p/enc-008.htm Here is an image to give you an Idea of how crammed it is:

That was my main question to was is there a big difference in cpu usage between a PCI vs USB sound card? And also what is the point of having a 6 channel chip on a board when you can't access all channels? I looked and it seems none of the boards have ports for all channels, but they have the same chip even newer ones.