sound card upgrade

[joanne fee]

Hi,

I have seen the new X-FI gamers cards claim to improve FPS by offloading dx
hardware sound acceleration from the system.

Is this true and how much difference can a sound card make to game
performance?

 

[Conor]

Hi,

I have seen the new X-FI gamers cards claim to improve FPS by offloading dx
hardware sound acceleration from the system.

Is this true and how much difference can a sound card make to game
performance?

Yes it is true, especially when "virtualising 3D", i.e mimicking
surround sound with only two speakers. In addition to that, there's
massive differences in sound quality, mainly in the upper ranges. No
matter how much I've tried, I cannot get onboard sound to sound as
clear in the upper ranges as a Creative card.

FPS wise though, I doubt you'd notice whilst playing unless you were
displaying a realtime FPS counter.