flyguy737 Posted May 15, 2010 Share Posted May 15, 2010 Hi all, I never noticed this until now but when I turn the sound off in FSX via the Q key the FPS increases. Now I am using onboard sound so why does this happen? Am I better off with not using onboard sound? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Manhart Posted May 15, 2010 Share Posted May 15, 2010 Yes your FPS will increase, but it will still happen (to some degree), with an aftermarket sound card. Unless you get a sound card in the ~$150 range with a dedicated sound processor (it's important for it to say that), you will ALWAYS incur a FPS hit. About 90% of sound cards are simply synthesizers for what the CPU has generated for the sound. All they do is tweak the sound, separate it into channels, or convert it to a digital output if they do not have their own processor. They still rely on the CPU to "create" the sound. Think of it this way: The CPU is the band, and the sound card is the guy working in the booth synthesizing the sound into a track. If you buy a sound card with a dedicated sound processor, the CPU is Britney Spears and lip-sings (making very little effort) while the sound card is actually singing and synthesizing in the booth. Hope this helps! Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolter van der Spoel Posted May 15, 2010 Share Posted May 15, 2010 very easy, if you use a onboard sound device it eats up cycle time (read resources) from your CPU, if you have a separate soundcard it has it's own soundprocessing cpu so it won't use system resources, alltough bagatalized by many, a good soundcard is worth the investment and free's up CPU resources Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolter van der Spoel Posted May 15, 2010 Share Posted May 15, 2010 lol Phil seems we where posting at the same time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyguy737 Posted May 15, 2010 Author Share Posted May 15, 2010 ok I never knew that so can you recommend a card for my system that is ok win7 and would usb card be better then PCI? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TenBlade Posted May 15, 2010 Share Posted May 15, 2010 I would expect a PCI connection to be faster than USB. Aren´t all sound cards from Creative these days?! Mine is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dags60 Posted May 15, 2010 Share Posted May 15, 2010 Yes pci/pcie soundcards are faster than any usb ones. I don't use Creative, havent for a while, Creative drivers have gone down the gurgler. I ditched my Soundblaster quite a while ago for an Asus Xonar and glad i did. Like changing gpu drivers if you want to get rid of Creative drivers from your system you have to use a driver clearner to totally get rid of them. Anyway flyguy, check out the Asus Xonar cards most of them are pci, but the higher end cards are mostly pcie, you can't go wrong with either of them and yes they run fine in W7 i'm using one myself no problems, but to find the right drivers check the Asus website. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyguy737 Posted May 15, 2010 Author Share Posted May 15, 2010 ok thanks for all that I found my old SB live 5.2 card put it in but I am unable to find a driver for win7 that works I then swap my boot drives in BIOS because I still have XP on the other drive and found that the card worked under XP however I think it is causing crashes because there is a bit of crackling and FSX froze on me and plus I was getting out of memory errors again so I will try to find a good sound card and see when I can afford that. thanks guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blitzer Posted May 15, 2010 Share Posted May 15, 2010 I don't use Creative, havent for a while, Creative drivers have gone down the gurgler. Like Dags60 I also ditched my Creative card (X-Fi PCIe family), it seems they are simply not capable of providing anything resembling near decent quality for Win7 drivers. I experienced problems in FSX only getting sound from the front speakers most of the time the rears just worked now and then. The final nail in the coffin was experiencing BSOD when using the Accusim'd P-47. It took me a while to trouble shoot, but it turned out that the problem only occured when using a creative sound card. Disabling my sound card and/or using on-board sound eliminated the issue, but using the on-board sound also had the undesirable effect of reducing performance (my reason for having a sound card in the first place). I now have a Asus Xonar D2X (?) card which is basically the equivalent of what I had in the X-Fi - again PCIe (PCI-Express). Botton line I would get a dedicated sound card, but not a creative labs one. Very happy with my Xonar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dags60 Posted May 15, 2010 Share Posted May 15, 2010 Great card Blitzer i have the Xonar DS running now but am picking up the D2X tomorrow and upon reading the reviews of it sounds like a great card. Flyguy as Blitzer said definately get a dedicated card if you can and yes like you said onboard sound does affect your frames and btw Asus have good support for W7 drivers on all their cards. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyguy737 Posted May 16, 2010 Author Share Posted May 16, 2010 thanks again guys for the heads up I'll check them out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Manhart Posted May 16, 2010 Share Posted May 16, 2010 lol Phil seems we where posting at the same time We seem to do that a lot... From now on we are going to have to schedule our times on the forum, or somebody's going to start thinking something's going on... Sorry, Submariner humor... you know... like 150 men leave for sea and 75 couples return...lol Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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