Enhanced Performance With Sound Card

[Guest]

If anybody can help a layperson who is not computer technology savy, I have a question -I have a G Force 2, 256 RAM, Anthlon 1.7 mhz and no sound card. I'm suffering from slow frame rates. Someone advised that the sound is taking too much of my processor's resources. But when I turn off the sound, there is no improvement in my frame rates. Does anybody know whether adding a sound card will improve my performance. Is the test I ran an indication that it won't?Thanks!

[Guest]

Silly question (but I'm curious too): did you turn off sound through bios settings?Bradley Dykes

[wsieffert 0]

Can you provide more details about your computer, Brand Name; MOBO manufacturer/model no.; operating system (OS), i.e., Win98, WinXP; Controller Chip vendor, i.e., VIA, Intel, Sis, AMD, ALI; Graphics adapter - Geforce 2 (what); Sound - on-board (what); Driver revision level for controller chips, sound, graphics adapter.It could be that your drivers are not up to date for use if graphics intensive games. Adding a sound card may or may not improve your problem.

[Guest JeanLuc_]

On the subject, on from my recent discoveries, the SB Live! Value card is definitely impairing the performances in creating a memory bus bandwidth contention. This appears when a lot of memory bandwidth is taken with huge bitmaps going back and forth from the main memory to the video card memory. Turning sound off ('Q' shortcut in FS2002) do show a steady difference of more than 5 FPS on a standard system I've tested it on (P4 1.3/384MB RAMBUS/Ge2MX32MB). I've also discovered that running some 16 bit apps on XP makes it more sensible. I wonder if the SBLive drivers are made of 16bit code (at least in part) or if their DMA controling code is not WHQL to the fullest extent...?!?!Anyhow, I'd welcome knowing the reason and the cure!Edit:just found this site:http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:hQldLY...&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[Guest]

No, actually I just used the "Q" key shortcut. I'm curious whether that actually "disables" the sound in the sense that the processor is no longer using its resources to deal with sound. If I went to the bios, is that a relatively easy process and is it easy to restore it to its original settings.DP

[Geofa 108]

Getting rid of my Sound Blaster Live card without a doubt improved performance on my computer!http://members.telocity.com/~geof43/Geofdog2.jpg

[Guest]

OK - there's some things I can't answer b/c I'm at work and I don't have access to my computer. The computer was built for me with high end parts a little over a year ago. Windows 2000GeForce2 ProAll I know about the motherboard is that it has some sort of sound hardward is built in that I was advised uses processor resources.I updated by Nividia GeForce2 Pro driver; and went to DirectX9; The GeForce2 update did nothing noticeable. Direct X9 helped. I'm running on 16 bit with these problems.

[Guest]

Epox (8KHA+ I think) motherboard with theVia KT266A chipset and an AMD XP1600+ processor. 256MB of PC2100 memory. Onboard sound. Geforce 2 GTS video card withthe latest Nvidia drivers. Also downloaded DirectX9. Windows 2000.

[Guest]

Here are my specs. Epox (8KHA+ I think) motherboard with theVia KT266A chipset and an AMD XP1600+ processor. 256MB of PC2100 memory. Onboard sound. Geforce 2 GTS video card withthe latest Nvidia drivers. Also downloaded DirectX9. Windows 2000.