Good day simmers.Is it normal to get substantial increase in frame rates, when disabling those crappy on-board sound chips (ADI 1988) and go with Creative Labs X-FI Xtreme cards??A review I came across was claming 30% increase!!What say you FS9'ers out there?Golli.

Yes, it's normal.A dedicated sound card takes over the sound calculation tasks off the CPU, giving more resources to FS (and any game for that matter).Those onboard chips are performance killers and are good only for watching films, listen to some music etc.For games, it's recommended to have a dedicated sound card.George DorkofikisAthens, Hellashttp://online.vatsimindicators.net/811520/1704.png

Could you post a link. I've just bought a system with the Creative Labs X-FI Gamer card and I was told that only with the use of surround sound (external soundsystem) the CPU is relieved of some duty's. I mostly use a headset so in my case the soundcard wasn't exactly needed as a I have excellent on board sound on my Gigabyte P35-DS4 mobo (according to reviews ;) )Rob "Holland&Holland" de Vries http://kewlceo.com/forums/style_emoticons/...crazy_pilot.gif"To go up, pull the stick back. To go down, pull the stick back harder"

HelloBy the time the sound output has reached your speakers or headphones the cards work is already done, How can the type of load plugged in have any bearing on the cards processing of raw data.Think about itDedicated cards will relieve load on the CPU, Some Cards are better than others , a really cheap PCi card may be no better than onboard sound.

Absolutely not, well at least not with onboard sound on any namebrand motherboard produced within the last three years. Even the mighty FSX, with its FPS draining ability, shows a neglible performance change going to an external sound card. Gary

Change for the worst or for the better? Rob "Holland&Holland" de Vries http://kewlceo.com/forums/style_emoticons/...crazy_pilot.gif"To go up, pull the stick back. To go down, pull the stick back harder"

I switched from onboard to Xi-Fi a while ago. While sound quality did improve, there was certainly no big increase in frame rates. If at all.

Ditto, virtually no change.I don't fault the logic of less load on the CPU, but reproduction of .wav files is light work for any relatively modern machine, onboard sound or otherwise. AFAIC if any fs9 user sees a dramatic increase in fps after ditching onboard sound then their onboard sound had a technical flaw to begin with.regards,Mark

It was too hard to call between the two, so I still say neglible. I found a chart I made of the benchmark I did with FSX before and after the external sound card "upgrade" I did, and have attached it below. It also shows the difference changing from a 7900 to an 8800 video card, which also ranks high in the "don't bother" category, well for DX9 anyway. Oh, an you can ignore the brief FPS dips you see in the chart, as they were later determined to be a conflict between the onboard sound driver and my antivirus program (PC-Cillin), fixed by telling my AV program to ignore realtime checking of my FS directories.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/180641.jpgSorry, I don't have an FS9 comparison, but given FS9's simpler sound support than FSX, the results should be just as valid.Gary

Based on the market search and study I've done for the Airliner XP A320 sound system, the thing can be sumed up like this:1) sound card relieve the CPU for some of the 3D sound computations, mostly in the sound effects department (like EAX effects).2) most sound card drivers (including highest end) still mix sounds in software, using CPU, and this is CPU intensive no matter what (i.e. poorly optimized in many cases)3) highest brands/models usually have better than average coding practices and even with drivers working the CPU to mix sound, they are slighly better than onboard sound.4) I've chosen to manage sound with a highly optimized software mixer, usually well faster than most sound card drivers, and supporting up to 7.1Hope this helps!

Thanks! So bottom line it makes hardly any noticeable difference...Rob "Holland&Holland" de Vries http://kewlceo.com/forums/style_emoticons/...crazy_pilot.gif"To go up, pull the stick back. To go down, pull the stick back harder"

I wouldn't say so...If you look at the chart and compare the 8800 without sound card (purple line) and with (yellow line), you will notice that with the sound card installed the fps drop at the same time is much less than without sound card. (2 vs 5 !!).. That's quite significant.You can see the difference during difficult phases of the flight, especially during landing where FS needs to retrieve and play all current sounds (engines, environment etc) plusthe wheel screech (this causes micro-freezes with on-board cards), the spoiler sound, the reverser, maybe a couple of switches flipping etc.Put them all together and the queue can get quite long.George DorkofikisAthens, Hellashttp://online.vatsimindicators.net/811520/1704.png

As previously mentioned, don't count the brief FPS dips with the onboard sound runs, as it was later determined that the sound system was not the issue.Gary