Does on-board audio affect performance?

[jakal]

Hi people. I currently use a creative vibra 128 pci sound card and it works great. My motherboard has HD sound onboard. Obviously the onboard is better quality than the pci card. I read many articles which say that onboard sound can decrease perfomance(gaming) because it can be heavy for the cpu. To get the similar performance like the onboard sound will cost R400(creative audigy value).

Does the onboard sound really affect the pc's performance???

Thanks.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Not so much that it would be detrimental to your gaming. On board sound suffers from minor things like electronic noise from the DSP being soldered onto the board. To be honest, you wouldnt really suffer any noticeable differences in gaming speeds and quality using onboard audio, even with massive audio games with EAX and stuff.`

 

[Cold Storm]

The only thing I have found that makes the PCI card better is games in which there is allowing you to use different settings for sound it self... Like Unreal 3 you have the ability to change from hardware sound... Not, to sure on what it is called on it.... But, by doing so it helps with the lag of the game...
But, that is my take on it... I've used both on board and pci card sound.. I just like the ability that I have to mod my sound by modding the card it self...
My two pennies worth.

 

[dirlan]

Hi people. I currently use a creative vibra 128 pci sound card and it works great. My motherboard has HD sound onboard. Obviously the onboard is better quality than the pci card. I read many articles which say that onboard sound can decrease perfomance(gaming) because it can be heavy for the cpu. To get the similar performance like the onboard sound will cost R400(creative audigy value).

Does the onboard sound really affect the pc's performance???

Thanks.

Hi,

If you disable onboard sound, you just release an IRQ, which is taken up by the discrete card. If you remove the discrete card and enable the onboard sound, that IRQ is used by the onboard chip. The only difference between a discreet card and onboard is the placement. Discrete cards are on slots but use the same NB/SB/CPU connections as onboard solutions. It's likely that the PCI solution is causing a performancehit, because of the extra hardware involved. Besides , the onboard HD quality is way better as the Creative solution.

Cheers,

Dirk

 

[r9]

It is not always the case that onboard is more cpu intense than PCI.
If the PCI card is full hardware than it offload the CPU, but if PCI card is like mine Audigy SE it use more CPU than onboard HD audio. Why ? Because it filters the sound more then onboard it tries to do what more expensive sound card does it is doing good job at music or movies but at games it lag more than onboard because the CPU does all the job. If you buy Audigy Gamer or so than you have a winner but the only reason to buy expensive sound card is sound quality you will gain not the performance if it is performance better invest that money at GPU CPU RAM.

 

[Ongaku]

The only onboard I've found that has drastically reduced FPS in games is SigmaTel audio. It came onboard with my old Dell laptop and on my friend's Dell she bought a year ago. It's the most horrible audio chipset to date I think. I turned it off when I was playing Morrowind and the FPS went up about 20 frames...

 

[Deleted member 3]

The only onboard I've found that has drastically reduced FPS in games is SigmaTel audio. It came onboard with my old Dell laptop and on my friend's Dell she bought a year ago. It's the most horrible audio chipset to date I think. I turned it off when I was playing Morrowind and the FPS went up about 20 frames...

Sounds more like a driver issue, can't imagine this being the case by default.

 

[Ongaku]

it might have been, SigmaTel doesn't even offer their own drivers, you have to get them from the computer's manufacturer...so Dell audio drivers...haha. Glad I don't have to deal with that anymore.

 

[WarEagleAU]

I stand by my original post. Ive noticed that old Audigy cards that did share the cpu, still didnt use as much resources as my abit A8n 32x xfire mobo did with the realtek HD audio. You cant get hurt either way, I just love a pci or pcie sound card to onboard audio.