[nForce sound] ALSA vs Nvidia OSS drivers

[chareos]

Greetings,


due to difficulties to have multi-applications, 5.1 sound out of my nForce4 integrated soundcard (I found dmix suggestions OR 5.1 one, no both things)
AND reading that ALSA does mixing via software while nvidia OSS do that via hardware, I was considering move from Alsa to nVidia nforce drivers.

I'd like to hear from you something about performances (is it better, for example with Doom3 or WoW via cedega ?)
Anyone got multi-app (kde+teamspeak+quake3 for example) sound working WITH 5.1 sound in xine ?


Many thanks for your experiences.

Fabio

[zbiggy]

Originally Posted by chareos

Greetings,

reading that ALSA does mixing via software while nvidia OSS do that via hardware, I was considering move from Alsa to nVidia nforce drivers.

Fabio

Hardware mixing can only do nForce1/2 with MCP-D/T southbridge. Only these MCP chipsets have APU (DSP processor). The Nforce3/4 have ordinary AC97 codec instead because Nvidia had to drop APU .

[energyman76b]

Hi,

@chareos

ALSA does hardware mixing, if the hardware supports it. Software mixing is just a fallback.

So if you do not have hw mixing the causes are a) the hardware does not support it or b) the driver is incomplete. But usually a)