sound card benchmarks, which uses less resources!!!

[glawton]

I have a soundblaster live! 5.1, then I have some onboard sound. (which is currently disabled)

Well I was reading a interested article about people discussing the horrible cpu usage, and FPS drop when using SB Live 5.1, even some users said they gained 10-15fps when switching to something other than SB Live 5.1.

Well recently I switched to a SB Live 5.1, for the very reason of trying to squeeze a few more FPs outta my system. I had onboard sound before! Well today why benching my 6800gt, I noticed I was getting new sound tests outta 3dmark 2k3, and was intrigued. I guess my onboard sound dont support whatever tests it does. Now sound wise they sound the exact same too me, so whatever effect is not supported by the onboard for 3dmark2k3 to not do the sound test is irrelevant.

However, why doing the sound tests I noticed exactly what the end user stated, I was getting 15fps drops when the sound test enabled sound. To me this is way unexceptable, especially since alot of time i have the sound off cause its late at night, hehehe.

What would be the very best way to test the performance decreases of both my sound blaster live 5.1 and my onboard to see which will give me better overall system performance?

Please dont say turn on fraps and start fragging, lol, I was hoping for a easier way I can just test both and call it a day instead of analyzing numbers.

Thanks in advance.

Yours truely,
Worriedwort

hahaha

 

[jvd]

I dunno . However i've seen tests from awhile ago showing the audigy 2 and sound storm taking up the least amount of cpu resources . With the live somewhere in the middle . Most on board sound will take more cycles than the live cards.

 

[anaqer]

http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20030405/index.html

 

[jvd]

http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20030405/index.html

review is quite old . Creative has the audigy 2 zs out with eax 3.0 and all eaxs are used in quite a few games . They also don't talk about how many voices the use in the tests . Oh well

 

[breez]

Audigy2 performance should be identical to Audigy2 ZS. The DSP part hasn't changed at all.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

My 6 channel onboard NForce 3 sound I feel is much better quality than my previous SBLive.

When I enable sound under my games there usually is a 2-4fps hit.

When 3d sound is enabled(yes there are 3d sound buffers and a DSP in my onboard sound) the hit is larger however the framerate lost under games with 3d sound is not noticable, the performance doesn't drop much further than with 2d only sound enabled but you can tell 3d sound is enabled.

What you can do to test is just make a timedemo in a level where there are lots of enemies so this way there are lots of sounds and don't kill enemies until large groups are chasing you and shooting and then run through corridors and rooms and outdoors.

This way you will test different reverb sounds and all sorts of 3d effects.

Run the demo twice with FRAPS.

Do this with both sound cards.

 

[jvd]

Audigy2 performance should be identical to Audigy2 ZS. The DSP part hasn't changed at all.

but there has been 3 driver releases since then.

 

[T2k]

Audigy2 performance should be identical to Audigy2 ZS. The DSP part hasn't changed at all.

but there has been 3 driver releases since then.

WHat a surprise.

Creative and buggy drivers? No shit!

 

[Guden Oden]

Uh, so driver updates = buggy driver huh? If so, I've got a graphics card that hasn't had a driver update for it since 98 that you may want to buy.

You're such a troll man, it's a miracle nobody's banned your ass by now...

 

[jvd]

Audigy2 performance should be identical to Audigy2 ZS. The DSP part hasn't changed at all.

but there has been 3 driver releases since then.

WHat a surprise.

Creative and buggy drivers? No shit!

Heh thats nice T2k , with the newest drivers my farcry and unreal 2k4 framerates went up an average of 3 fps each.

So apparently they aren't that buggy .