does a sound card improve FPS in a game?

[samanand]

I heard this somewhere that this is so. If so can u tell me by how much in % ?. Thnks in advance.

[Murf]

In computer video streams, the frame rate describes playback rates for AVI and QuickTime movies. The video playback rate for an AVI or QuickTime movie directly relates to the perceived smoothness of its playback. The higher the number of frames playing per second, the smoother the video playback appears to the user. Lower rates result in a choppy playback. (As a reference point, film uses 24 frames per second to allow the viewer to perceive smooth playback.) Several factors affect the actual frame rate you get on your computer. For example, your PC processor or graphics hardware may only be capable of playing 10-15 frames per second without acceleration.

In developing motion pictures, television, and video, frame rate information is used as a reference for audio signals. The recorded signal includes information about location in time using a 24-hour clock, and individual frame numbers. This signal is used to synchronize multiple audio and video machines during the recording and editing process.

So to answer your question Yes it could if the audio card is not playing the audio right and not keeping up with the video. This can be caused by the wrong audio codec for the sound card. Frame rates are closely related to CPU utilization; the more CPU attention your 3D audio card requires, the slower the frame rate will be.

[samanand]

thanks for replying. But I think the audio in a game(music) also utilizes the CPU. If there's a dedicated sound card won't it free up CPU utilization a little bit and thereby resulting in an increase in FPS?

[l337_GuY]

You would probably see less than 1% difference.

[oracle128]

Without a dedicated sound card, your CPU has to handle the majority of audio signal processing. However, like a video card, getting one doesn't mean the CPU can ignore audio/video altogether, it still has to pass data to the relevant card to process.
If your CPU is a bottleneck in your PC gaming performance, then yes getting a sound card could improve performance, the exact amount depends on a lot of factors such as how far in front of your video card or RAM that your CPU is the bottleneck, what quality settings you use for audio, etc. It is impossible to say that getting a sound card will improve performance by xx%, because that simply won't be the case in all setups.

Performance is only as good as the slowest component. For example, if your CPU has a performance of 10 units (where "units" is an arbitrary metric for performance), and your GPU performance is 8 units, getting a sound card may improve your CPU performance to 12 units, but your whole system is still going to run at 8 units when 3D graphics are involved. But let's say CPU performance is 10 units, GPU is 14 units. Getting a sound card may improve CPU to 12 units, so now your whole system is running at 12 units of performance. Obviously this is a simplistic example, as hard drive, sound card, RAM, physics processing etc all play a part in the overall performance; and apart from that, there is no one definitive, generic measurement for performance of each individual component in the system.

[samanand]

Thank u for the expertise. Thing is I have a creative soundblaster card lying around in my shop and I'm struggling to run "Two worlds" on an athlon x2 6000, 2gb of 800 RAM and a 7600 gt card at a decent graphics setting. Just thought this card might make a difference. Thanks again.