Integrated audio performance hit?

[eL_PuSHeR]

Hello. My A7V333 board has a CMI8738 (6 channel) integrated audio chip. How can I measure real time performance hit when playing games? Would buying a dedicated pci sound card be a good move? Would I notice something? I want to hear your opinions.

[Dazz]

Depends if you get an Audigy 2 then yes, yours is a hardware soundcard so performance wise you may get something like an extra 5~10fps in older games, i know using my software sound vs my SBLive 5.1 in UT (going back now like) the was a 30fps diffrence. The biggest diffrence between the two would be features.

[Smokey]

3dmark2003 has a sound test
;)

[ALobpreis]

You can use Win2K/XP's Task Manager or Win9x's System Monitor to check CPU usage. Do it while using Winamp.

Or you can make Quake (or other measurable games) timedemos with sound enabled. Maybe that's even better now that I think of it.

[eL_PuSHeR]

I am surfing the web right now while I'm listening to 192KBps mp3's with WMP9 and CPU usage is about 4-15%. Is this a good value?

[Jon]

If its anything to go by, I was playing BF1942 with a frame rate of 58FPS. I enabled Hardware Sound with my PCI512 and it dropped to about about 35 FPS. After getting my Audigy 2 and enabling Hardware sound I get 75 FPS.

[Dazz]

My Audigy plays MP3's at around 1~3% CPU usage with it spiking every once in awhile to 7% although this is in media player 9 with visual effects on but minamised.