Worth getting a new sound card?

tunis5000 · Post by **tunis5000** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 8:36 am

Is it worth spending $65 (CAN) for a SB AUDIGY 2 (O.E.M.) to replace my ASUS on-board audio? It sounds fine, the reason I'm asking is I'm trying to squeeze more performance out of Source games (especially DOD:S) and I read that the audio can take quite the CPU load, and was wondering if it would help me get better performance, or it won't make any noticeable difference? Anyone have any knowledge or experience with this?

MegaVectra · Post by **MegaVectra** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 10:05 pm

FP will probably disagree with me, but most dedicated soundcards will almost always perform better (both CPU wise and sound quality wise) because there is more hardware devoted for the task at hand (creating sound). Many of the integrated on-board solutions have only 1 chip, few transistors, and often rely on software emulation to produce sound. This causes CPU load and can also degrade the sound experience. But some newer motherboards have very good on-board audio chipsets. I personally went from an onboard AC97 to a Audigy 2 and noticed a huge increase in sound quality.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 10:21 pm

Well I really won't disagree with what you said, but given the CPU overhead on modern systems the question is how much performance does a dedicated card buy you? If it's 20FPS in DOD S then I'm all for it, but somehow I doubt it amounts to more than a few FPS at most.

Most on-board sound on decent quality mobos are just as sophisticated as what's on an add-on card. The difference is going to be in features that have nothing to do with gaming, like environmental audio which is a BIG performance hit if it's done on CPU versus dedicated hardware, and audio quality (noise, distortion and seperation) which doesn't matter in games.

Frankly I'd like to see some benchmarks showing what kind of difference in performance you'd see between a standard onboard CMedia or AC'97 sound solution, and a pricey add-on sound card. Might make a believer out of me if I saw some real-world data.

The lack of this data leads me to believe it's not much of a difference.

Back in the early days when you could barely get 23 fps out of an overclocked Voodoo 3D card, a 2 or 3 FPS improvement was a BIG DEAL (it meant the difference between an unplayable and a playable game), but today it's nothing to get excited about. Back then you saw a lot of sound card benchmarks because a cheap sound card on a Pentium II system could easily cost you 10 fps.

My opinion, unless I see some benchmarks that show a big difference, is that any modern onboard sound is all you need for gaming. If you're going to be doing audio recording or editing on a more than casual level then you probably want a better quality card.

EvilHorace · Post by **EvilHorace** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:20 am

My newest PCs mobo has built-in sound and I can't hear any difference between that and my old SB Live using the same speakers. Gaming performance and/or sound simply hasn't been an issue with any of the latest "perf hog" type PC games (IE Doom3, Quake4, FEAR) at high resolution. I personally wouldn't consider buying an extra sound card these days unless your mobo is known to have very bad sound for some reason.

tunis5000 · Post by **tunis5000** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 10:44 am

Well most games run fine, it's just DOD S seems to chug when there's a lot of action going on, which happens a lot. I read that turning off sound helps performance so I tried it and it was quite a difference. Now of course I don't want to play with no sound, so I thought about researching getting a dedicated sound card and have read that it should improve performance. I'm going to give it a try...

smb · Post by **smb** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 11:10 am

Originally posted by EvilHorace
My newest PCs mobo has built-in sound and I can't hear any difference between that and my old SB Live using the same speakers.......

That is really subjective. What might sound good to you might sound horrible to someone else. The only way to really discern excellent sound is by using a good set of headphones.

Anytime you are able to offload sound decoding from the CPU to an APU there is a boost, depending on the API (EAX, A3D, etc..)

You can find all kinds of sound card reviews that compare just about every solution out there.

I know from my personal experience, I was using onboard sound that was O.K. (P4P800-DLX SoundMax). I then went to a Chaintech AV-710 (Via Envy), sounded great for MP3's, but it would stutter during games. I currently use a Creative X-Fi music. Stuttering is gone so I'm satisfied.

I still think the best sound card in the last 3 years was the Philips Acoustic Edge (thunderbird avenger 706 chipset), and in the last 5 years was the Monster Sound MX300 (Aureal Vortex 2 Chipset). Just my opinion.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:07 pm

I have found that Realtek onboard audio tends to cause more overhead the Cmedia ones do. Overall, a sound card will be very nice and will provide you with more options and jacks to use in the future.

Currently I use a Cmedia 8738 PCI sound card just because I need the Line-in jack for my tv capture card and use surround sound.

Nomad · Post by **Nomad** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:15 pm

Im with FP on the fact that its only a few FPS at most, but (knowing that you all know that I didnt read anything else in the posts) IMO i would have to say that the quality of the sound would be better, it really has nothing to do with the CPU's load with the gameplay overall. But then again what do I know anyway.

ZYFER · Post by **ZYFER** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:25 pm

Originally posted by Nomad
But then again what do I know anyway.

Apparently plenty

tunis5000 · Post by **tunis5000** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:58 pm

Originally posted by ZYFER
I have found that Realtek onboard audio tends to cause more overhead the Cmedia ones do.

Yeah it's Realtek, so there you go...

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:34 pm

Tunis, if you REALLY wnat to know if the sound card is holding you back, disable your sound card in device manager and play the game without sound enabled. If it still chugs (as I suspect it will) you'll be wasting money buying a sound card.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 9:18 pm

Dod Source (all the source engine games) are pretty resource hungry. You'd better have a decent rig with a minimum of 1Gb. I would also recommend disabling HDR lighting in the video settings. It's a dramatic performance killer, and frankly the added cool shadows don't add anything to gameplay. I'd rather have the extra performance instead of the cool shadows. I have what I consider a powerful system but HDR is off, I use no FSAA, filtering is set to Bi-linear and I use simple shadows. Vsync is disabled (and I'm normally a Vsync lover).

Also, are you running an Athlon32 system? Here's something interesting. I have two systems - both AMD 3200+ 1Gb, both running ATI Radeon x800 Pro video cards, one is a 939 Athlon64 the other is an Athlon32. Most benchmarks show only a slight difference in performance (CS: Source stess test is 107 fps for the Athlon32 versus 115 fps for the Athlon64). HOWEVER this is not the whole story.

I play a LOT of DOD Source and the Athlon32 system feels like it stutters a lot. Not unplayable, but it's noticeable and annoying. It especially stutters badly for several minutes after a new map loads. Morever when I exit the game, it's VERY slow to return to the desktop. Dod Source uses ALL of the 1Gb of Ram and the system is extremely slow when returning to the desktop until the RAM is freed.

When I started playing regularly on the Athlon64 system I was very suprised to find that there was little or no stutter and the game instantly returns to the desktop and frees memory right away unlike the Athlon32 system. Seems to me that the source engine is better tuned to run on Athlon64 systems. In most other games there's virtually no difference in performance between these two computers.

Having spent a lot of time tuning my systems for Dod Source (all I play is Dod, Dod Source and Swat4) I can tell you that unless your sound card really sucks ass, that's the last place to buy performance. You're better off just freeing up RAM. The less background apps running and the more free memory the better. Try my above mentioned video settings. If you have a decent 256Mb video card then reducing resolution doesn't help much - that class of card runs the same at 1024x768 as at 1600x1280. Anything less I would recommend 1024x768 (for example a 128Mb Radeon 9800 would run dramatically better at 1024x than 1600x but you'll see no improvement on a Radeon x800).

HDR is the biggest performance killer by far AND it also takes MUCH longer to load maps with HDR enabled (like twice as long).

tunis5000 · Post by **tunis5000** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 11:47 pm

FP, I have an OK system: Athlon 64 3800+, 2 gigs RAM DDR, ATI Radeon X800 XT AGP, etc
I am planning on upgrading the vid card in the next few months, but I'll need a new mobo too for PCI-E. Just saving up the cash.

Anyway, I run DOD:S with all of the flashy stuff disabled, I don't need it, and like you said I'd rather have the performance than the looks. Gererally it runs OK, just sometimes when when there's a lot of action all at once or viewing longer distances it can bog down. I have tried disabling the sound and it does perform better. I've researched it and it's something about the sound in Source games (especially DOD) that can cause performance issues. Anyway, I can go on and on, point is, I'm just trying a theory that a dedicated sound card will help, it's not very expensive and might just be worth it until I get a new video card...

BTW, I saw you on a server the other night, 'Frenchy's Pit' I think it was... said hi but you didn't notice, I had to go anyway

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 7:11 am

Well if the performance noticeably improved when you disabled the sound then it might be worth a shot. You've got me intrigued. I have an SB Live lying around here. Maybe I'll throw it in my Athlon32 rig and see if it helps.

Yeah, I play on Frenchy's Pit servers a lot - they're good servers, well administered.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 8:29 am

Okay Tunis, you've made a believer out of me. I guess the Source engine really is fussy about onboard sound.

I installed an old SBLive 5.1 on my Athlon32 system and DOD Source is not stuttering anywhere near as bad as it used to with the onboard AC'97 audio.

Hmmm... now I need to try it on the Athlon64 rig...