Do we need sound card's hardware acceleration?

[alg7_munif]

IMO, I don't need them because I'm playing games in 1600x1200/1920x1200 resolution. I've read that when playing games at higher resolutions, the GPU will be the limiting factor so the CPU can do all the sound processing without any noticable performance loss. I don't think that playing games at higher resolutions will gain any benefit from a sound card's acceleration. If you read this review, even the Core 2 X6800 didn't give much performance boost compared to a X2 4600 at higher resolutions. I think that the sound card's acceleration only helps if you have a powerful GPU and you are playing at a CPU limiting resolution.

 

[Gautama]

I think its all just marketing

 

[VGplay]

Yes, once games become utilizing the CPU for stuff (physics, multiple threads, whatever Alan Wake needs 4 cores for) I don't want sound processing tying it up.

 

[DaCoOlNeSs]

Yes, once games become utilizing the CPU for stuff (physics, multiple threads, whatever Alan Wake would be better with 4 cores for) I don't want sound processing tying it up.

fixed

 

[Moofasa~]

Yes, without hardware accleration we get shitty software audio engines in games...if we all had onboard and X-Meridians there would be no reason for a developer to construct a decent audio engine.

 

[MrWizard6600]

oh man, sound quality wise... I own:
an Nforce 2 w/ sound storm
a rig w/ Crative X-fi
and a just finished (well kinda stupid fucking hitachi has pissed me off) rig w/ 680i (hence high definition azalia audio

number one, im on right now, listening to some U2. sounds great. got 4 speakers + woofer. my personal bias says this is good sound. the actual numbers i believe are that sound storm has 96bit decoding, which is the same as the creative x-fi.

number two, yeah, its not bad. i put in some pretty econo speakers so, i suspect im not using that card to its full abillity. its got an old P3 in it.

number four blew my mind, mind you, its using the best speakers. Iv setup a surround sound system in my room. its totally awsome. I much prefer this to the Xfi.

my two cents - no you dont need an (off board) sound card.

 

[alg7_munif]

Yes, without hardware accleration we get shitty software audio engines in games...if we all had onboard and X-Meridians there would be no reason for a developer to construct a decent audio engine.

Are you trying to say that without hardware acceleration, a game will not sound good? You better wait until Crysis comes out, even Oblivion can give a good sound without OpenAL and EAX. At high resolution, what difference can a sound card make compared to a X6800 or you think that X-Fi is more powerful than X6800? Look at the review, only 1fps gain with X6800 at high resolution, if they use X-Fi will they get more fps? Please give a more concrete reason why do we need sound card's acceleration like a review showing X-Fi & X-RAM acceleration in games at higher resolutions. Some reviews test the X-Fi at a very low resolution on purpose to avoid GPU bottleneck and how many of us still play games at 800x600?

 

[drizzt81]

I think that it is generally a good idea to have an ASIC, if not more powerful than a general purpose CPU, it is likely more energy efficient.

Do I own a sound card now? no

 

[alg7_munif]

Do we need it since we already have a CPU? Adding another processor is also a waste of energy if you already have a processor that is not used.

 

[Donnie27]

Are you trying to say that without hardware acceleration, a game will not sound good? You better wait until Crysis comes out, even Oblivion can give a good sound without OpenAL and EAX. At high resolution, what difference can a sound card make compared to a X6800 or you think that X-Fi is more powerful than X6800? Look at the review, only 1fps gain with X6800 at high resolution, if they use X-Fi will they get more fps? Please give a more concrete reason why do we need sound card's acceleration like a review showing X-Fi & X-RAM acceleration in games at higher resolutions. Some reviews test the X-Fi at a very low resolution on purpose to avoid GPU bottleneck and how many of us still play games at 800x600?

I think that's not exactly what he's saying. So I'll say HW Accelerated games have more effects and generally sound more convincing. It's not an opinion but a fact that most games have EAX 3+, EAX+DS3D or OpenAL support. Half Life 2 and Oblivion are the exceptions and not the rules.

I agree with your first post though. But, IMHO, Acceleration is more important for Sound Effects than Increasing Frame Rates.

With an ATI X1800XT I play BF2 at moderate Eye Candy and only at 1024 X 768 online.

 

[alg7_munif]

So effects can't be done with sotware? Oblivion can do a good sound without EAX, I don't see why other games can't give a good sound without EAX in the future. With Vista, I think that more games wouldn't need EAX to sound good. I agree that you need a Creative's card to get EAX, but do you need the hardware acceleration if EAX can be done by CPU?

 

[madmat]

The X-Meridian supports EAX 1 & 2 and it sounds just as good as gaming on a pure hardware card with EAX 1 or 2 enabled. EAX 3, dunno, never used it so I can't speak from experience there but I've had Audigys and the X-Meridian blows it away.

 

[alg7_munif]

Good sound is a point, but do we really need HW acceleration, does it really help in games? People always said Creative's cards do this and that in hardware but does it really make a difference if this and that is done by software in a real situation, not just purposely playing at a lower resolution? Please don't just vote without giving any oppinion. If you think you need it please tell me why?

 

[MetalX]

Try playing a game(if you even can) with 128 voices being processed all by your CPU and you'll know why the X-Fi is popular.

 

[alg7_munif]

I can and I will, I have both X-Fi and X-Meridian, I'll try playing BF 2142 demo at high resolution with X-Fi and X-Meridian and see if there is any fps increase with X-Fi, I think that if the game is already GPU limited, X-Fi wouldn't help much even X6800 wouldn't help also.

 

[MetalX]

I can and I will, I have both X-Fi and X-Meridian, I'll try playing BF 2142 demo at high resolution with X-Fi and X-Meridian and see if there is any fps increase with X-Fi, I think that if the game is already GPU limited, X-Fi wouldn't help much even X6800 wouldn't help also.

Go ahead and enable the "Ultra" sound quality option with your X-Fi removed from your system.

 

[alg7_munif]

Go ahead and enable the "Ultra" sound quality option with your X-Fi removed from your system.

You haven't heard the news?

 

[MetalX]

You haven't heard the news?

With performance loss, my point exactly.

 

[Donnie27]

So effects can't be done with sotware? Oblivion can do a good sound without EAX, I don't see why other games can't give a good sound without EAX in the future. With Vista, I think that more games wouldn't need EAX to sound good. I agree that you need a Creative's card to get EAX, but do you need the hardware acceleration if EAX can be done by CPU?

Yes but if those effects are done in software we'd see more of a performance hit on the Processor. OpenAL and MLP are done by a dedicated Chip on the X-Fi, NOT by its general DSP. When I get a chance, I'll do a screen shot of DVD Audio being done on my Core 2 Duo via PowerDVD 6 Deluxe 6Ch addition.

IMHO it will do NOTHING for Game sounds. The way I understand it Vista removes Sound hardware Drivers from the kernel. This not so sound can sound better but for stability. I fail to see two things here. How this will help sound and why hurting the best support, Creative's EAX/OpenAL helps us by dragging down the best.

 

[Donnie27]

The X-Meridian supports EAX 1 & 2 and it sounds just as good as gaming on a pure hardware card with EAX 1 or 2 enabled. EAX 3, dunno, never used it so I can't speak from experience there but I've had Audigys and the X-Meridian blows it away.

EAX1 and 2 is not in the same BallPark as even EAX3 Then 4 out those that.

 

[alg7_munif]

With performance loss, my point exactly.

That is at a lower resolution, if you play at a higher resolution, will there be any difference? At which resolution did you play?

 

[MetalX]

That is at a lower resolution, if you play at a higher resolution, will there be any difference? At which resolution did you play?

1024x768 isn't exactly high res but is very commonly used and isn't low res by any means. Guru 3D claimed a 13% decrease in fps over the X-Fi using 128 voices in BF2142 in a Meridian review. They were using 1024x768 with 8xAA, so I'm sure the GPU wasn't lounging around idle.

 

[alg7_munif]

At a lower resolution, a game is still limited by CPU eventhough a higher AA is used, I know this because I used SLi before and I read SLi forums, they all said that at a lower resolution SLi will not be faster than a single card and sometimes it will be slower because of CPU hogging. To get away from CPU hogging they used high resolutions. I want to know, the X-Fi can help up until which resolution, and is the resolution common amongst gamers.

Edit: A nice thread about CPU and GPU bottleneck.

 

[MetalX]

1024x768 isn't exactly high res but is very commonly used and isn't low res by any means. Guru 3D claimed a 13% decrease in fps over the X-Fi using 128 voices in BF2142 in a Meridian review. They were using 1024x768 with 8xAA, so I'm sure the GPU wasn't lounging around idle.

^^^ Not sure where your going with AA doesn't tax GPU so I'm standing by that.

 

[Moofasa~]

I can and I will, I have both X-Fi and X-Meridian, I'll try playing BF 2142 demo at high resolution with X-Fi and X-Meridian and see if there is any fps increase with X-Fi, I think that if the game is already GPU limited, X-Fi wouldn't help much even X6800 wouldn't help also.

Many people also have LCD's and are locked at lower resolutions or small CRT's (according to Valve's survey the overwhelming majority has monitors between 15 and 17 inches). That's great that you are "GPU limited" at higher resolutions, but you are in the minority, the slim minoirty at that. For most a 15% fps drop is unacceptable from a sound card.

 

[DeChache]

Hardware acceleration is need for people like me that don't have the latest and greatest system and refuse to because they aren't worth the money (IMO).

Hardware acceleration is needed for the people that are trying to scrape by on minimum specs and need to offload what ever possible from the cpu to try and get the game to run decent..

I have a computers one with realtec integrated and on with an X-Fi and I think the X-Fi sounds better. The realtec is louder for some reason but the X-Fi sounds better.

 

[alg7_munif]

I've just tried BF 2142 demo with my X-Meridian using hardware renderer+Ultra(128 voices) at 1600x1200. My fps is between 35-75(I think average around 50+fps) with all graphics max except AA at 2x, haven't tried higher AA and X-Fi yet. Nice graphics but I think I like COD more because of more actions. Maybe just the demo is like this and I didn't understand the gameplay yet. I've played CS and COD before and those games are like "fire at will".

 

[hardc0re]

if you turn down hardware acceleration the audio sounds like sh*t

 

[Donnie27]

if you turn down hardware acceleration the audio sounds like sh*t

That's one way to put it.

 

[alg7_munif]

Now I'm confused, someone said before that the CMI chip does Direct3D, EAX and tons of other stuffs in software, so even if I used hardware renderer, it is still software right???

 

[phide]

We don't need hardware acceleration, but of course hardware acceleration is desirable. If it can be done, do it, and do it well. Compared to video cards, many sound cards are tremendously expensive, so these expensive cards should include a rich feature set. Hardware acceleration is one of those very desirable things that can be performed, and it opens the doors to other more complex features.

In any case, the topic of this poll seems charged, and seems to exist solely as a means for alg7 to spread some sort of propaganda. The question itself -- do we need hardware acceleration -- is an utterly obvious and almost rhetorical one.

^^^ Not sure where your going with AA doesn't tax GPU so I'm standing by that.

Yes, it does. Anti-aliasing taxes the GPU and memory substancially.

Yes, without hardware accleration we get shitty software audio engines in games...if we all had onboard and X-Meridians there would be no reason for a developer to construct a decent audio engine.

The audio engine, fundamentally, is typically the same for both EAX-enhanced and non-EAX platforms. In some cases, developers will utilize EAX extensions to achieve certain results that may be typically processed in software (such as distance attenuation), but there's always a non-EAX software fallback. The audio engine is doing things differently by making EAX calls, but it's not a different engine, nor are audio engines somehow inhibited by non-EAX hardware.

And, actually, the inverse of your last statement is true. Without EAX, developers would rely more upon the processing possibilities of APIs and software engines. With OpenAL, you're given the capability to do API-wide effects and are given a great deal of control over how they function. The limitation is the number of effects sends. If you aren't using OpenAL, you can always build these effects by hand via the audio engine. The audio engine becomes more complex and more robust out of necessity. Crysis is an example of this.

For games that support EAX, they're just using EAX extensions and having the engine pass the variables. They can fine-tune the variables that get passed, but they're also potentially limited in how extensible these effects can be. They can also only utilize these extensions if the user has some sort of EAX-capable hardware.

I think EAX is an excellent tool, but, like 3dfx's old Glide API, later versions are a proprietary and hardware-specific means of achieving the end result. EAX is a good thing, but it's also a very bad thing. Those that fail to see this duality are somewhat blind to reality in my opinion.

 

[alg7_munif]

I want to know why people said that creative's cards are the only cards suitable for gaming? Is it because of hardware acceleration or EAX5? If hardware acceleration is the reason, does the acceleration really helps in games? If EAX5 is the reason, then all other sound cards are really crap because creative's won't let other company to use it. Then again why Vista doesn't support hardware acceleration in DirectSound?

Edit: I posted the same question in nVidia's forum and got this answer:

Depends on the game, the type of sound being generated and your exact video setup. With some gpu setups you could easily be CPU limited not GPU limited, and you would get better performance with a good hardware sound solution.

Not to mention connected games and network overhead, running something like teamspeak, etc etc etc.

I think that this is the real answer, you wouldn't get a performance increase or loss if you are GPU limited but you will if you are CPU limited.

 

[phide]

From what I've heard, EAX 5 can be licensed for some sort of outrageous fee. I don't know the validity of that claim, nor do I have a ballpark of the cost, but that's something that might need to be mentioned. Of course, with C-Media having seemingly zero interest in OpenAL (besides building a crude wrapper), I highly doubt they're eying up EAX at this point.

Yes, of course hardware acceleration really helps in games. I want to squeeze as many frames out of my modestly high-end box as I can, and hardware acceleration is what that's all about. Tests have proven unequivocally that it provides varying degrees of benefit.

Microsoft dropped hardware acceleration in DirectSound because, according to them, it reduces many issues. According to one of the lead architects, it was the source of most crashes and lockups in gaming scenarios in XP. It may be something that's difficult or impossible to get right, but it seems that Creative gets it right with OpenAL and hardware acceleration. DirectSound may be too broad or too deeply intertwined with other DX subsystems to be able to provide hardware acceleration stable enough for their standards.

It might have also been a move that would reduce Creative's market dominance. I don't really know why Microsoft would want that particularly, but it's a possibility.

I think that this is the real answer, you wouldn't get a performance increase or loss if you are GPU limited but you will if you are CPU limited.

Being GPU/CPU limited is not black and white. The situation changes every frame. In some areas, there may be an abundance of complex geometry and shaders, very little sound and no AI. In another, there may be a couple dozen AI, very low visual complexity and numerous sound sources and software effects. Between these two scenarios, the limiting component may flip. And because the GPU relies on the CPU in some respects, it becomes fairly blurry.

 

[alg7_munif]

Being GPU/CPU limited is not black and white. The situation changes every frame. In some areas, there may be an abundance of complex geometry and shaders, very little sound and no AI. In another, there may be a couple dozen AI, very low visual complexity and numerous sound sources and software effects. Between these two scenarios, the limiting component may flip. And because the GPU relies on the CPU in some respects, it becomes fairly blurry.

I'm sure that playing games at high resolutions(1600x1200 and above) will give a GPU bottleneck, I've seen review showing a 8800GTX would still be a limiting factor at higher resolutions.

 

[phide]

It may be the predominant limiting factor, but not the limiting factor every single frame. Some games are more computationally complex and some games are less so.

 

[FLECOM]

Try playing a game(if you even can) with 128 voices being processed all by your CPU and you'll know why the X-Fi is popular.

128 voices? last time i checked "voices" are refering to the wavetable... which lsat time i chedked are for midi playback. wtf game do you have that still uses midi for anything?

i honestly dont think it makes one bit of a difference honestly... i have my audigy 2 and i dont really notice a difference between software/hardware mode in 2142... either way all those sound cards sound terrible anyway... i run my audigy 2 into my dac and life is good...

anyway how many fricken "processors" do we need? we have our CPU, our GPU, now sound card processor? and dont forget the physics processor, oh and the top of all the stupid things, our network processor... gimme a break... a $20 AV-710 sound card running into an external dac will sound far better than most sound cards anyway

 

[phide]

A voice is a playback channel. 128 voices means that 128 audio events can be played back simultaneously.

 

[alg7_munif]

128 voices? last time i checked "voices" are refering to the wavetable... which lsat time i chedked are for midi playback. wtf game do you have that still uses midi for anything?

i honestly dont think it makes one bit of a difference honestly... i have my audigy 2 and i dont really notice a difference between software/hardware mode in 2142... either way all those sound cards sound terrible anyway... i run my audigy 2 into my dac and life is good...

anyway how many fricken "processors" do we need? we have our CPU, our GPU, now sound card processor? and dont forget the physics processor, oh and the top of all the stupid things, our network processor... gimme a break... a $20 AV-710 sound card running into an external dac will sound far better than most sound cards anyway

Lol, you're funny but may I know the price of your external DAC? I know what you mean, most sound cards are terrible compared to an external DAC but some cards are expensive because they have some "good" DACs.

 

[FLECOM]

Lol, you're funny but may I know the price of your external DAC? I know what you mean, most sound cards are terrible compared to an external DAC but some cards are expensive because they have some "good" DACs.

ya but even good cards which use good IC's are still inside your PC, which is RFI hell... and is still being powered by a (by audio standards) crap power supply

my DAC was $350

 

[alg7_munif]

ya but even good cards which use good IC's are still inside your PC, which is RFI hell... and is still being powered by a (by audio standards) crap power supply

my DAC was $350

You compared your $20 sound card (+$350 stereo DAC) to a $200 sound card(+$0 4 stereo DACs), not fair lol.