Soundcards and Framerates ... Upgrade to Audigy 2?

[appye]

I was wanting to get some opinions on this:

I already have a soundblaster Live! value which when it was the latest and greatest was touted as being able to offload the sound processing from the CPU ...

I am pretty sure that the onboard sound on my K8N NEO2 PLATINUM is all done through software, so it robs CPU cycles and would not be an option.

Would using an audigy2 make a big difference over using my 4 year old Live card? Basically, framerates are all i care about in this discussion. The Live! sounds fine to me and I am not all that concerned about sound quality so much as I am concerned about Framerates in games.

Theoretically, let's assume I am capable of averaging 100fps in Doom3 with my Live! card and all my other kickass bitchin hardware. What framerate would I then expect to get with onboard audio? What about if i were to use an audigy 2?

Thanks.

 

[Concillian]

There's a very similar thread to this in the Video forum
http://forums.anandtech.com/me...1&threadid=1430213
Thought you may be interested in the opinions there.

I think most people play in a situation where they are video card limited, and not CPU limited. Sound card changes will only really affect the CPU portion of the equation. So if video card is your primary limiation, then framerates won't change at all with lower CPU utilization. If CPU is your bottleneck you'll see an improvement.

The ultimate solution is to test without audio and see if your framerates improve. If they do then a better soundcard will help, if they don't then you are limited by video card and sound card will not improve your framerates. You kind of have to take it on a case by case basis with your hardware and game at the resolution(s) and game settings you use. But most people set things in such a way that they are video card limited.

BTW -- The example of Doom III you use is a bad one, because it caps framerates at 60FPS, so you'd never see 100 FPS

 

[appye]

Okay, sounds logical. I will start building my system now. I guess i will go with the onboard sound. I can always upgrade later if it suits me. Thanks for the link.