Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: SirNuke on May 20, 2013, 04:49:52 AM
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The way win7/8 currently handle sound acceleration, does it still make sence to get a pcie sound card to gain some fps?
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Depends on the answers to a bunch of questions, some of which are:
What are you using now for your sound processing? (PCI card, motherboard, USB, etc)
What CPU are you using?
Depending on the answers to those questions, the answer to your question could be Yes, or it could be No.
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I use either an integrated ALC892 chipset or a G35 usb headset on a core i5 3570K
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i have a creative SB Recon3D PCI-E card.
Which i have not used yet because i use HDMI, I might get some surround speakers and used it :old:
I might get a Titan GPU and sell my gtx 680.
(http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/dd391/zack12310/IMG_0063_zps1c6819f9.jpg) (http://s1217.photobucket.com/user/zack12310/media/IMG_0063_zps1c6819f9.jpg.html)
(http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/dd391/zack12310/IMG_0005_zpsa0dd8d01.jpg) (http://s1217.photobucket.com/user/zack12310/media/IMG_0005_zpsa0dd8d01.jpg.html)
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I use either an integrated ALC892 chipset or a G35 usb headset on a core i5 3570K
the usb headset causes more cpu overhead than the alc892 does. but i doubt that a pci-e sound card would "gain some fps" for you if you have at least a quad core processor.
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get a sound card because they give you better sound that an integrated card.
semp
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One reason to still get a creative sound card is that new versions of windows have dropped directsound support. Creative cards have a system called Alchemy which will emulate directsound for older games and convert it to OpenAL which is the currently supported interface.
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get a sound card because they give you better sound that an integrated card.
semp
I'll probably get one just for that reason, I had a Audigy 2 ZS before and the difference is obvious
One reason to still get a creative sound card is that new versions of windows have dropped directsound support. Creative cards have a system called Alchemy which will emulate directsound for older games and convert it to OpenAL which is the currently supported interface.
Yeah If I could use my pc without installing a Creative driver or the Alchemy "crack" That would be better. They actually wanted us to pay for Alchemy at first :rolleyes:
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It would be nice if Creative had software with the same quality as their hardware. I started AH on Vista with the OpenAL fix for hardware acceleration, but it would really distort the Doppler effects that DirectX already distorts. Alchemy is at least a step forward, but you have to be aware which games you have that were written for OpenAL versus Alchemy, because there is a difference that you can hear on high end cards (maybe not so much on the ZS).
If you use Windows 7 with the Alchemy addon and then put in stereo sounds to AH you will probably discover that formations of bomber aircraft have distinct areas around them where the sound is either compressed (very audible) or where rarefaction (silencing) occurs. In other words, escorting bombers and flying around them the sound of the bombers is partially blocked just like a picket fence was built around them. OpenAL would over-compress the Doppler effects, but rarefaction never happened as far as my experience with it went.
The biggest problems I could see were with time difference of arrival, which is probably universal with anything that uses DirectX. For instance, if a P-51, or any other aircraft, is on the deck at the limit of its speed capability, then a listener on the ground should not hear it initially at the same distance that a listener would an airplane at 5k doing just 180 indicated. In AH a user will hear them both at 3.2k distance (give or take) whereas in real life the fast mover on the deck would be in gun range before you heard him coming. Alchemy more closely approaches this capability, but is still miles away from achieving it.
I don't think that there is anything HTC can do to more correctly portray these things. I think it is in the hands of Windows and your hardware. For some reason video games push the video and computing markets, but don't seem to have as much affect on the audio market. So, there is opportunity there for someone with enough money to affect a change.
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Battlefield 3 (and I think Bad Company 2 too), and Arma 3 have sounds with physics. You will see an explosion before hearing it in both games. The sound will bounce off of the environment as well. If you have BF3, have a buddy shoot a rocket down a tunnel/hallway. You can hear the pitch change as it flies by (Doppler effect). In a large map, blow up the oil tanks standing from afar. It takes a few seconds to hear the explosion after you've seen it.
BF3 is one of the few games that I've been tempted to buy a sound card solely for it. Which brings me to a question, if you don't have the proper speaker setups (ex: two generic Dell speakers that came with the PC), would it be worth it to invest in a sound card?
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AH sound effects also bounce off the environment in a way. I've got a Creative X-Fi Platinum Pro Gamer and sitting on a VBase or near mounds I often have difficulty telling which direction other vehicles are coming from as the sound relects off nearby structures or hills.
BTW, music sounds great too through my Klipxh 2.1's.
As to the OP my card has onboard RAM and processor so it does take all the load off the CPU but I'm not sure there's many cards built that way currently and it was rare even in the past, limited to the higher end cards without much of a market.