I'm still using a SoundBlaster Live! Value on my P4 2.4GHZ PC. Can that actually be hurting the performance of my games, being such an old board?

I wouldnt think so.

Onboard sound can hurt performance, but cutting into your CPU power, but with a soundblaster card like that it is all done on the card, so I dont think you have anything to worry about.

If you want the newer features out there like EAX3, and X-Fi audio, it may be time to upgrade.  Quite a bit of difference between an X-Fi and a Sound Blaster Live!

Quoted: I wouldnt think so. Onboard sound can hurt performance, but cutting into your CPU power, but with a soundblaster card like that it is all done on the card, so I dont think you have anything to worry about. If you want the newer features out there like EAX3, and X-Fi audio, it may be time to upgrade.  Quite a bit of difference between an X-Fi and a Sound Blaster Live!

Yeah, I knew on-board audio can cut into CPU cycles, wasn't sure about an older Live! card though. Thanks.

Haha yeah, I'm looking at Creative's website right now. Good stuff!

Quoted: Keep your video drivers updated.

Always do

Before AC97's were integrated into motherboards, I always used Creative family of products for my PC sound needs.

Recently, I saw a benchmark of HL2 with onboard audio and a Sound Blaster card. Under the same configuration, the one with Sound Blaster card had about 10~15 fps more than the other one (I think onboard one scored about 60~65 fps)

So I just got a low-end SB Live! card to replace onboard audio device on my motherboard. It also takes care of that EAX thing on hardware level so its better on that regard too.

Sound cards (good ones like Audigy 2 or  something) improve perfomance when gaming most noticably. It takes a ton of weight of the cpu like someone has already stated, and games these days have high bit rate quality sound so in essence, you could notice a tremendous amount of improvement in your frame rates, and less hang ups during play

I recommend an Audigy product if your in that catagory of needing one

The biggest problem with on-board sound and video is they allocate (read: steal) RAM from your total amount for themselves.


Essentially that's less RAM your computer has to work with.


This slows things down markedly.  It also makes the CPU work harder as mentioned above.  It's just one more task it has to perform, when you use on-board anything.


Even a 20 dollar, cheapie soundblaster card will free up that system RAM and CPU power for more important things.