I've read of course that onboard sound solutions have an impact on performance, in my case I have the nvidia SoundStorm as I have an nforce2 mobo, however I was wondering is there actually a benefit to using an external card, I still have my SoundBlaster LIVE X-Gamer 5.1 kicking around, I was wondering if anyone thinks there would actually be a performance difference and how much
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Onboard vs External Sound Cards
- Thread starter SoulWind
- Start date
mustang_steve
c[H]ewbacca
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2003
- Messages
- 11,339
if your not using the 5.1 digital out as a 5.1 output (as in NOT stereo), then yes, you will see an improvement...otherwise just stick with the soundstorm.
reason is the soundstorm is the only solution right now to encode to 5.1 ont he fly, and also does it in pure hardware, so there is no cpu overhead aside from shuffling bits. The live still uses the CPU to process some things, but it's far more efficient than a on board codec chip which merely accepts already fully processed CPU output and converts it to sound.
reason is the soundstorm is the only solution right now to encode to 5.1 ont he fly, and also does it in pure hardware, so there is no cpu overhead aside from shuffling bits. The live still uses the CPU to process some things, but it's far more efficient than a on board codec chip which merely accepts already fully processed CPU output and converts it to sound.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
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- 14,669
Soundstorm and Live! cards are somewhat well matched- the best advice anyone can give is plug it in and try it.
For analog output, the Live may sound better because it will have discrete DAC's that are not integrated into the mainboard- while integrated sound CAN sound good, most mainboards of the Nforce2 era did not implement it well; thus the codecs did not live up to their potential.
For digital output, Soundstorm is still the standard by which everything else is held, in that it encodes all outbound audio in DD 5.1 for transport. This really only matters for games though, as DVD's already have this, and music is stereo which can be sent digitally on any digital out.
For analog output, the Live may sound better because it will have discrete DAC's that are not integrated into the mainboard- while integrated sound CAN sound good, most mainboards of the Nforce2 era did not implement it well; thus the codecs did not live up to their potential.
For digital output, Soundstorm is still the standard by which everything else is held, in that it encodes all outbound audio in DD 5.1 for transport. This really only matters for games though, as DVD's already have this, and music is stereo which can be sent digitally on any digital out.