Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Guest dek

sound lowers framerates 15-20%

Recommended Posts

I noticed I am losing about 15-20% off my framefrate in FS2002 when I hit 'Q' and have the sound enabled. As soon as I hit 'Q' again and turn off sound, my fps goes up 15-20%.I have experimented with low sound quality and other sound settings in both FS2002 and DirectSound to no avail. I assumed that the SB Audigy would take some load off the CPU; I think the 15-20% fps drop is excessive. I have a SoundBlaster Audigy MP3, WinXP, on a homebuilt rig (1800 mhz, 512 Corsair RDRAM, etc.) I have the latest WHQL drivers from Creative; (new ones are pending I believe, the beta driver link posted on Tom's Hardware has been removed). Is this 15-20% frame drop with sound normal? Or is there something wrong?My apologies up front if this topic has been re-hashed before...


Rhett

7800X3D ♣ 32 GB G.Skill TridentZ  Gigabyte 4090  Crucial P5 Plus 2TB 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have hashed this topic quite a bit. Have you tried running Audio Winbench 99 to check for your Audigy's CPU use? Try it and see what you are getting. Have you moved the sound acceleration in DirectX down to Basic? This will help some if you have been having it at Standard or Advanced.I would start with Winbench 99. It sounds like you may be a bit steep. My onboard audio chip didn't have that much fps, and now my Audigy II has allowed sound to have virtually zero fps hit.Noel


Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest dek

Hi Mace, This was an early problem in FS2002 that was solved for most people by going into DXDIAG and turning down the sound acceleration setting. Try setting to "basic".Hope this helps! dek

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've often pondered this subject. I can't understand how turning acceleration down would increase performance. You'd think that off loading the sound on the hardware would decrease CPU usage and net a gain in framerates.Could anyone explain this to me, please?Cheers,Glenn

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest kilo_sierra17

I have noticed the same thing, I have a "Sound Blaster Live! Value" It sounds very good and does a good job, but when I ran FS, I would get around 11-12 FPS I would then turn the sound off and I would get 15 or 16!, so then I turned sound acceleration down to Basic, then the frames would go up to about 12-13 with sound on, sound off it only went up 1 frame, but for other games, its the opposite, if the sound acceleration is Basic, the game is slower so I end up going back and turing it to Full Acceleration and it makes the other games smoother.EDIT: Does it make a difference if I am using the default Win XP drivers for my sound card?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Glenn, I believe what's happening is you are tapping into advanced sound processing features of DirectX when you increase acceleration. So with little or no acceleration, you get little or no additional processing overhead, if you get me drift.Noel


Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Makes sense, Noel. I guess the best bet is to simply try different settings with different software and see what's best.Thanks for the reply,Glenn

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest SlimDady

I dont understand why you think runing sound should not effect performance.Really its another task that the pc has to deal with.What you should notice is lower end soundcards or some onboard audio will effect framerate more then somthing like an audigy, they rely more upon the cpu for sound processing..I dont think ur gona avoid having a framerate hit, its another thing that takes some cpu useage.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm already running "basic" sound accel in DXDIAG.My belief is that a sound card has a cpu of its own to handle sound, and one of its reasons for its existence is to lessen the workload of the cpu. Kind of like a gpu, but for sound. Yes, sound IS another thing for the cpu to handle, but still, I feel I'm getting too high a framerate cut with a soundcard I spent $100+ for last year. If the SB Audigy can't handle things, I will have to find something that will. I used to run a Diamond MonsterSound MX300 and it was great, but wouldn't work with XP and was getting dated anyway.I ran WinBench and ran the DirectSound tests and got 86 to 95% cpu usage on all of the tests. How does this square with anyone else?


Rhett

7800X3D ♣ 32 GB G.Skill TridentZ  Gigabyte 4090  Crucial P5 Plus 2TB 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...