Nvidia HDMI audio any good?

[snorge]

Hi, kinda of a silly question but I haven't been able to find much info in the usual places. I recently got an Nvidia graphics card with HDMI audio. Is there any benefit to using this over my Creative usb sound card? I am wondering about the quality and if enabling it would take any load off the cpu for gaming. Thanks.

 

[LtGoonRush]

HDMI audio on current cards works by having a small audio chip on the card, the same chip that provides the onboard audio on motherboards. What kind of speakers do you have and how are you planning to hook them up? If you're hooking your HDMI cable up to a receiver it will probably sound better than your USB soundcard. If you're using speakers built into or plugged into your monitor, it will depend on whether your monitor or USB soundcard has a better Digital to Analog Converter (DAC), which will probably be the USB soundcard. Using HDMI audio will use a bit less CPU than the USB soundcard because USB itself uses a lot of CPU, but it probably won't cause a measurable performance difference.

 

[snorge]

I have cheapish Logitech speakers and use my pc mostly for gaming. I am trying the hdmi audio now and it does seem to increase my fps a bit but I'm not so sure about the sound quality. It is hard to judge because the Creative drivers have so many "enhancements".

update: actually it is a pretty huge increase in fps using the hdmi audio. The creative stuff must really bog the system down.

 

[tweakboy]

Its good. 44hz 16bit ,, Not as good as on board audio. The creative usb thing is horrible, and horrible driver support.

Use the HDMI nvidia audio over that creative anyday. Also the creative might slow down your fps and what not.. gl

 

[snorge]

Its good. 44hz 16bit ,, Not as good as on board audio. The creative usb thing is horrible, and horrible driver support.

Use the HDMI nvidia audio over that creative anyday. Also the creative might slow down your fps and what not.. gl

Actually under the properties it says it supports 16 and 24 bit at 44.1 and 48kHz. For onboard I have the typical realtek chipset on most motherboards. I realize the creative usb card is crap but on some games the software processing it does actually improves the sound.