Creative’s dedicated sound cards still make a difference when PCs struggle to sustain 30FPSon certain games, (and can help getting a stable 60FPS) on poorly optimized titles (or games that have been plagued by Denuvo).
I suspect it mainly has to do with the fact that Windows usually outputs uncompressed audio (due to requiring extra licencing for codecs like Dolby on a general-purpose PC, unlike consoles).
Because of that, a dedicated sound card will take that weight off the CPU.
In my case in particular, i noticed an 5-8FPS increase when playing AC:Revelations with my dedicated sound card (bear in mind, my CPU is merely a Core 2 Duo), but that’s because i still don’t have the money to upgrade my whole rig.
Back on topic, i saw a video by Anton’s Hardware that made a deep research on the topic, and while the conclusion was that, yes, on current games & hardware it didin’t make up much of a difference, it could be useful for specific cases, (in some poorly optimized games you can get better frames, and in well-optimized games can push FPS a bit further.
To finally end my comment, i’ll add a link to the video i just mentioned, along with one of the comments that i think demonstrates a “best case scenario” for the use of a sound card in current gaming.
I used to use sound cards myself ages ago for MIDI and DirectSound acceleration. I didn’t expect the hardware audio codecs to actually make a difference.
Nothing is stopping me from installing a PCIe Sound Blaster with a good old EMU chip. At least I hope so, the EMU10k1 and 20k1 have a hardware DMA bug which breaks them on systems with more than 2GB of memory lol
Not sure if I should go the CMedia route and just use Xonar instead. I do like Creative’s features (especially ALchemy), but those you can gain on any machine using a software suite made by Creative themselves.
I mean i don’t remember having audio driver issues last time i used Ubuntu on my desktop PC (i think at the time i had an Audigy SE, now i have an X-Fi XtremeGamer).
You got me curious, i’ll try it as soon as i can and i’ll tell you back the results.
Aside from failing to convince me, they have deepened my own conviction that sound cards are essential to maintaining decent framerates.
Why is this the case? Please elaborate.
Creative’s dedicated sound cards still make a difference when PCs struggle to sustain 30FPSon certain games, (and can help getting a stable 60FPS) on poorly optimized titles (or games that have been plagued by Denuvo).
Are you serious?
Now you got me wondering why this is the case…
I wonder if it’s just the drivers. Or something else, like the audio device name, or APOs.
Which game in particular did you have in mind?
I suspect it mainly has to do with the fact that Windows usually outputs uncompressed audio (due to requiring extra licencing for codecs like Dolby on a general-purpose PC, unlike consoles).
Because of that, a dedicated sound card will take that weight off the CPU.
In my case in particular, i noticed an 5-8FPS increase when playing AC:Revelations with my dedicated sound card (bear in mind, my CPU is merely a Core 2 Duo), but that’s because i still don’t have the money to upgrade my whole rig.
Back on topic, i saw a video by Anton’s Hardware that made a deep research on the topic, and while the conclusion was that, yes, on current games & hardware it didin’t make up much of a difference, it could be useful for specific cases, (in some poorly optimized games you can get better frames, and in well-optimized games can push FPS a bit further.
To finally end my comment, i’ll add a link to the video i just mentioned, along with one of the comments that i think demonstrates a “best case scenario” for the use of a sound card in current gaming.
https://youtu.be/aFy9jZzDSnY
This is an interesting watch.
Thanks for sharing!
I used to use sound cards myself ages ago for MIDI and DirectSound acceleration. I didn’t expect the hardware audio codecs to actually make a difference.
Nothing is stopping me from installing a PCIe Sound Blaster with a good old EMU chip. At least I hope so, the EMU10k1 and 20k1 have a hardware DMA bug which breaks them on systems with more than 2GB of memory lol
Not sure if I should go the CMedia route and just use Xonar instead. I do like Creative’s features (especially ALchemy), but those you can gain on any machine using a software suite made by Creative themselves.
As the video i linked demonstrates, Asus cards are slower than Creative cards, so i recommend Creative.
That being said, choose whatever you feel comfortable with. :)
How is their Linux driver support?
You got me there pal.
I mean i don’t remember having audio driver issues last time i used Ubuntu on my desktop PC (i think at the time i had an Audigy SE, now i have an X-Fi XtremeGamer).
You got me curious, i’ll try it as soon as i can and i’ll tell you back the results.
What do sound cards have to do with anything?
Sound cards can literally save your performance when your frame rate is -30FPS
And since we’re talking Denuvo here, i thought it was on topic.
Yeah my thoughts exactly. I need an explanation
the people have a right to know!