what does this mean?

[bizzy420]

In addition, those of you with soft audio solutions or sound cards that lack dedicated hardware acceleration for DirectSound streams may want to upgrade your audio subsystem for Half-Life 2, as you may not want to give up precious CPU cycles for audio processing. Aureal owners witnessed this firsthand with the original Half-Life.

what does that mean? i got a crappy sb live 5.1 digital, and i dont know what they mean about that cpu cycles thing. can someone explain?

 

[Tork]

i got a sound audigy 2 platinum so i shouldnt be worried. But for people that use for example a soundcard thats built onto a motherboard (nforce sound) it uses more cpu cycles to process audio then a sound audigy 2 thats more easy on the cpu.

 

[ripkord]

Yeah but if youve got an nforce mobo, you shouldnt need to worry about mispent cycles. Whats that avatar from tork, i have a feeling i have seen it somehwere.....

 

[Tork]

its from A.P.E Force run.

 

[ripkord]

ok maybe not

 

[dawdler]

Originally posted by Tork
i got a sound audigy 2 platinum so i shouldnt be worried. But for people that use for example a soundcard thats built onto a motherboard (nforce sound) it uses more cpu cycles to process audio then a sound audigy 2 thats more easy on the cpu.

Actually SoundStorm (Nforce2 MCP-T) uses far fewer CPU cycles than Audigy 2.

 

[Tork]

hmm im not sure if its the same one you're talking about but they are very close.

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/audigy2_versus_nforce2/page5.asp

When you compare the two sets of numbers, it seems that the nForce2 has about 3% CPU usage overhead (recall that this is on a Duron 950).

As the number of streams increase, however, the nForce2 starts to catch up.


Audigy 2 Pro's

Low CPU utilization
The numbers speak for themselves

 

[ripkord]

might get an audigy 2, they are teh cheap0r now.

 

[Tork]

i got both of them audigy 2 and a nforce2 built onto my a7n8x ive installed one and the other and i seriously cannot tell any difference they are very close. I shouldnt of used a nforce2 as a example since it will work just fine, this is for older sound cards.

 

[Woggy]

Im stuck with an SBVibra 128 and i couldnt really care.

 

[BloodyL]

It's not a thing to worry about if your machine is capable of running HL2 at a decent rate, we are talking maybe a 5-10fps loss at most.

It's only really a problem in low end (sub 1ghz) machines and very badly engineered cards and drivers.

 

[Woggy]

It's only really a problem in low end (sub 1ghz) machines

Uh oh

 

[BloodyL]

What's your take on it then?

 

[Infiniti]

What about an Asus mobo with a built-in Yamaha soundcard (dont laugh), will that affect me a lot?

 

[BloodyL]

With the exception of the Nforce 1 & 2, onboard soundcards normally depend upon the CPU to do all of the processing and generally have the highest overhead of all.

 

[poseyjmac]

only real way to tell us to run benchmarks with your onboard and one with a high end audigy card

 

[slap]

I also have a SoundBlaster 5.1 Digital and can safely say its a great stable sound card.. Works well with all games and should work just fine for HL2...no worries..!

 

[ice101]

Is a NF7-S a nForce mobo? Thats the one I'm thinking of getting, as I have no working sound card

 

[Tork]

Originally posted by ice101
Is a NF7-S a nForce mobo? Thats the one I'm thinking of getting, as I have no working sound card

yeah one of the best nforce2 motherboards out there.

 

[dawdler]

Originally posted by Tork
hmm im not sure if its the same one you're talking about but they are very close.

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/audigy2_versus_nforce2/page5.asp

When you compare the two sets of numbers, it seems that the nForce2 has about 3% CPU usage overhead (recall that this is on a Duron 950).

As the number of streams increase, however, the nForce2 starts to catch up.


Audigy 2 Pro's

Low CPU utilization
The numbers speak for themselves

Ah, well, its low... Playing music yeilds 0% CPU usage for me anyway

 

[undertoe]

how much cpu usage is a SB LIVE VALUE? for say 12 audio sreams under directsound ?