Slight skips in Doom 3 and Half life 2

John Carlyle-Clarke wrote:

Is that true of all integrated audio, or are there good and bad ones?
I am browsing for an upgrade at the moment, and most motherboards have
audio now. Should I budget for soundcard as well, to avoid
performance problems?


No, not all. I use the integrated audio in my Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard
and it has given me zero problems...

"Smart Feet" wrote
John Carlyle-Clarke wrote:
Is that true of all integrated audio, or are there good and bad ones?
I am browsing for an upgrade at the moment, and most motherboards have
audio now. Should I budget for soundcard as well, to avoid
performance problems?
No, not all. I use the integrated audio in my Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard
and it has given me zero problems...

But if "real" PCI sound card has got hardware buffers etc.
which I guess most of integrated mobo sound chips don't
have, there can be a slight performance gain in CPU-
intensive games playing a lot of sounds simultaneously.

Of course, with the latest monster-CPUs the difference
can be quite unnoticeable. But I noticed noticeable
performance hit in few games when I switched from
SB64PCI to mobo's integrated AC'97 and the CPU
was XP1700+.

Taking a moment's reflection, John Carlyle-Clarke mused:
|
| Is that true of all integrated audio, or are there good and bad ones?
| I am browsing for an upgrade at the moment, and most motherboards have
| audio now. Should I budget for soundcard as well, to avoid
| performance problems?

I don't know if it is true of *all* integrated audio devices. However,
I know that integrated devices will use CPU, Bus, and RAM resources that PCI
devices will not. Therefore, there is always the potential for poorer
performance from integrated devices when compared to PCI.