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Can a Sound Card improve your FPS?
wrekognize
Member UncommonPosts: 388
in Hardware
I was talking to a GW2 player today who said he was having problems with his sound while playing the game. He added a sound card to his rig which resolved the problem. Not only did it resolve the problem, but it increased his FPS. He claims the sound card has freed resources on his motherboard which has improved overall performance.
Has anyone else experienced this or know if this is true? I'm looking for more feedback.
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Comments
Well he added a new GPU, of course itll help FPS lol.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
It should be obvious why adding a graphics card can increase your frame rate.
As for a sound card, usually not. Sound computations take up very little CPU time, so offloading it from the CPU is barely any benefit. There are probably some corner cases where a sound card would offer a slight benefit to your frame rate, but it would amount to a rounding error as compared to what a better processor or video card can do for you. For that matter, even when the benefit is there, it would probably amount to a rounding error, period, if you tried to measure it.
My mistake. I meant to type, "he added a sound card to his rig".
Im not sure you understand what you are saying....He added a new graphics cards...hence it made his graphics/fps better.
Nothing to do with sound i'm afraid.
Now, if you meant to say he added a SOUND CARD and typo'ed Graphics Card, then no, that would not help his FPS.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
My mistake. I meant to type, "he added a sound card to his rig".
Ah, ok.
No, that did not help his FPS in any noticable manner i dont think.
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
He claims he has a decent rig prior to adding the sound card. He did not give me the specs. The sound was through his motherboard prior to adding the sound card.
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There will be NO difference in FPS with a Discrete Sound Card. The only thing the player will get is better sound. The reason is quite simple.
Sound cards handle sound processing(mixing sounds and playing them). Graphics cards handle graphics rendering(FPS).
GW2 has a processor bottle-neck so it is possible to increase FPS by reducing workload of the CPU. However, getting a new sound card with a modern computer will not reduce CPU workload. Most modern motherboards have a sound-chip embedded on them that handles sound processing similar to a Discrete Sound Card.
With that said, some games have errors because of audio errors. If this is true, then the player discovered a major problem with Guild Wars 2 is bad audio drivers/codecs. Maybe it could be a codec pack causing an issue. Maybe the player has not updated their audio drivers since getting their computer. Maybe the onboard soundchip is faulty.
I never heard of a case like this but I guess it is possible if you used the same IRQ for both cards before and they messed up, or if you had something else crashing.
Another possibility is that he had a bad sounddriver before that slowed down the entire computer.
This is possible but something really rare, in almost all cases you wont notice any difference so dont go out and buy a new soundcard thinking it will improve your FPS.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre