Does a sound card always "hardware" accelerate audio?

[AndroidVageta]

Ive been reading online some things and I keep seeing that hardware acceleration, especially in games is dying. But my thought is is that if you have a good dedicated sound card (in my case a X-Fi Platinum) then even if something like a PC game doesnt actually have the option for hardware sound, arent you still getting hardware accelerated sound due to the audio being processed by the sound card and not the CPU?

Its not like if theres no option for hardware audio that the CPU processes the sound then its just passed through the sound card...the card is still doing its job, no? So does not having the option for hardware sound really effect anything?

That is all, discuss!

 

[zagood]

Good answer from when you first posed the question:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29494830&postcount=48