How much does sound card help (and is it worth crowding my video card)?

[cmhodge]

Hi guys,
I've had a Soundblaster PCI 512 sound card sitting on my shelf for a while. It's a basic entry level card. I am running with chipset sound on my Compaq computer. I would have installed the sound card a while ago, but I was concerned that it would be restricting air flow to my video card (ATI Radeon 9250, no fan, just a heat sink). There's only one slot left, and that would be right next to the video card.

So I have a two part question. First, will the sound card improve performance noticably? Second, am I right to be so concerned about the air flow?

A better video card might be an option sometime down the road, but not for a few months probably.

thanks,
Chris

[noell]

Theoretically, a separate sound card should relieve some CPU loading and improve performance in FS9. Whether or not that would follow through for your SB PCI 512 card is hard to tell without giving it a try. So, here's what I'd do:

First, note the temperature of your video card (I'm not familiar with ATI video cards so I don't know how you check an ATI card temperature. For nVidia cards, the GPU core temperature is shown in the Temperature Settings section of the nVidia Control panel. Surely, ATI must have a similar feature). Next, open your computer and install/configure your soundcard. As you are worried about overheating your video card (and rightly so), leave the computer open while you evaluate whether or not having the sound card improves your performance. If it makes no difference, remove it, button everything up and forget about it. On the other hand, if it does make a difference and that difference is enough to make you want to keep it installed, then start worrying about the video card temperature. Let's assume it does make a difference and you want to keep it insatlled. In that case, close up the computer and monitor the video card temperature. If it only goes up by 10 degrees or so, don 't worry about it. If it goes up more than that, look at adding another fan. An 80 mm would do it. If there is no mounting provision in the front or back of the case for an additional fan, consider cutting a hole in the side or top of your case. I've done that at times and its not really very difficult. If you can position the additional fan close to your video card and positioned to suck hot air out of the case and away from the video card, that would be great.

Hope some of this helps.


....Noell

AMD Athlon 4000+ (San Diego)
CoolerMaster 'Aquagate 120' Liquid Cooling
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
2GB OCZ DDR400 CL2
BFG 7800GTX OC 256MB (Driver: XG84.12.v2)
OCZ PowerStream 520W
SB Audigy Gamer
SATA HDDs:
36GB WD Raptor (X2; RAID 0)
74GB WD Raptor
120GB WD Caviar

[noell]

If you get into mounting an additional fan, you may find this of interest:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1936351,00.asp


....Noell

AMD Athlon 4000+ (San Diego)
CoolerMaster 'Aquagate 120' Liquid Cooling
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
2GB OCZ DDR400 CL2
BFG 7800GTX OC 256MB (Driver: XG84.12.v2)
OCZ PowerStream 520W
SB Audigy Gamer
SATA HDDs:
36GB WD Raptor (X2; RAID 0)
74GB WD Raptor
120GB WD Caviar