High CPU Usage Even With Soundcard?

[YellowMenace]

I've had one of these and sound playback through it is alright, but I noticed that when doing something simple like watching Youtube or music playback, CPU usage goes all the way up to 80%-90%.

Is this normal with a soundcard? Because I thought that was one of the reasons to actually use a soundcard.

[Godlygamer23]

Sound cards don't really decrease CPU usage that much.

[ZetZet]

how is it even relevant, cpu does the same job of playback, dac that converts the sound from digital to analog is on mobo not cpu anyway. you just moved it to a soundcard, cpu does not care.

[jfing14]

Regardless your CPU still has to decode the music file and then output it. Sound cards do nothing except offer better conversion of that outputted digital sound to an analogue frequency for your speakers/headphones to play back

 

Sound cards are pretty much just stupidly expensive bad DAC's. Unless you are one of those people who fall into the very specific need for a sound card and run more than a couple of speakers you will not need one. Just get an external DAC (O2/ODAC are great)

[YellowMenace]

how is it even relevant, cpu does the same job of playback, dac that converts the sound from digital to analog is on mobo not cpu anyway. you just moved it to a soundcard, cpu does not care.

From what I read up, people say that a sound card can reduce the load on CPU by doing the sound processing on the card itself rather than the CPU doing it.

Whether or not this is true, I have no Idea, I dunno much about sound equipment, I just had this thing laying around.

[ZetZet]

From what I read up, people say that a sound card can reduce the load on CPU by doing the sound processing on the card itself rather than the CPU doing it.

Whether or not this is true, I have no Idea, I dunno much about sound equipment, I just had this thing laying around.

unlikely, maybe some special card.

[jfing14]

No thats wrong. Sound cards are useless

[theodoro]

From what I read up, people say that a sound card can reduce the load on CPU by doing the sound processing on the card itself rather than the CPU doing it.

Whether or not this is true, I have no Idea, I dunno much about sound equipment, I just had this thing laying around.

This was pretty accurate in the old days. Now the CPUs are waaaaay faster and the sound processing isn't a big deal for them. 

EDIT: the high CPU usage is caused by other processes...

[YellowMenace]

This was pretty accurate in the old days. Now the CPUs are waaaaay faster and the sound processing isn't a big deal for them. 

EDIT: the high CPU usage is caused by other processes...

But it only seems to spike up when sound is playing, when I disable audio, it lowers and higher bit rate audio does affect it noticably. :T

[creatip123]

Might be the driver that's draining the resources. Try switching to onboard to see if there's improvement.