Is it true?

[Drunken Warrior]

I was reading in another forum and this guy was telling another guy that onboard sound cards eat up 20-25% of the CPU just being there. I thought man, that seems kind of high, so I posted to see where he got this information from, alas no response yet. Has anyone here ever heard anything like that or was the guy just blowin' smoke :WTF:

Her'sthe actual statement:

AC'97:
Onboard audio has come a long way & can boast quite a bit, unfortunately it's still quite lacking when compared actual sound cards. Besides sound quality or compatibility (namely EAX) which I'd imagine is fine 4 your usage although definately lesser: The CPU Utilization of onboard audio is quite high. I'd guess U're probably looking @ around 20-25% CPU Utilization JUST for your onboard sound.

After reading a couple of times I now see the " I'd guess " comment, but would like to hear any comments from the Pros here :jammin:

[Sirc]

:blink: I've never heard of that. I don't know why that would be the case unless it was a poorly engineered motherboard. :WTF: :drink:

[Slice]

Never heard that before. I don't think it is true.

[JIMINATOR]

um, i think that is really high.
i read a review of various sound card stuff.
the best were the boards with the nvidia dolby 5.1 sound on board, i think they used 1% cpu
the best board was about 3%
after that, it goes up, maybe to 15% (fuzzy memory)
note also that many other type of onboard sound use onboard cpu cycles
anyway, if you are real interested you can go to :
www.tomshardware.com (http://www.tomshardware.com)
www.anandtech.com (http://www.anandtech.com)
www.hardocp.com (http://www.hardocp.com)
i am sure you can find benchmarks for all that stuff

[Death-Dude]

Still, an interesting question, to me....which takes up more CPU power, AC'97 or other onboard, or an add-in like my Live-gamer? Also, which uses more power?

[ME BIGGD01]

that is too high and i would say no. now lets talk about cpu cycles.....

it is possible depending on what sound chip you are running for it to be using up cpu cycles. many devices use up cpu cycles.

now if you have a generic sound card pic slot or integrated--chances are it will use up between 10-20% of the cpu when it needs to like mp3 or other sound rendering game. i am not sure if you remeber the first soundblaster pci128 because this car use to use up cpu and crash your system. actually now that i think of it most of the creative products did :wacko:. most of the high end sound cards today will not use up that much cpu since they have hardware built into the chipset. also poorly written drivers can effect this which was the case for creative labs.

if you want to know something that uses up cpu and power that most people don't realize is usb devices. each port provides power and is using power when a device is plugged into it. some people have everything plugged in via usb (mouse, scanner, printer, toaster oven). all these thing are using up some power and cpu cycles. play a game like sam with all of your devices plugged in usb and then play with them all out and a ps2 mouse. you will nottice a difference depending on the cpu you have which leads to my next statement.

todays cpu's can handle anything you pretty much throw at them. today most devices that are integrated are and will run faster through out the bus because they are integrated in the south bridge of the chipset. this will cut down on latency. again, most of todays systems are more than enough powerful unless you are still running a p3 or older setup.

early next year you will see the pci buses change drastically. with the pci xpress spec and the hypertransport, alot of the motherboard bottlenecks are going to be eliminated. this september 23 amd will release there athlon64 chip. i am more enthused on the chipset that's going to be for that chip because the motherbaords will have amd's hyper transport technology which speeds up the bus. the new mac g5 actually has this technology. i cant wait to see it perform in front of me.