[Asr]

I barely listen to music from my computer, but I'm contemplating getting an external DAC mostly for the sake of gaming, as both my laptop and desktop have lackluster sound cards. So this isn't a "which USB DAC do I get?" thread. I want to know instead how a USB DAC will affect framerate for gaming, primarily action titles like Half-Life 2, Far Cry, and F.E.A.R. How noticeable would the framerate loss be?

My desktop is a P3 1GHz built on the legendary SE440BX-2 with 384MB RAM (the sound card is a Sound Blaster AWE64, heh) on Win98 SE, while my laptop is a Pentium-M 1.86 (Sonoma chipset, 533MHz system bus) with 1GB DDR2 RAM and WinXP SP2. Of course, I do my current gaming on the laptop.

But I play quite a few games on the desktop too, like Half-Life 1 and some Quake 3-engine games, which it has more than enough power for of course, but would a USB DAC take away too many CPU cycles?

 

[lan]

Yes there is too large a frame rate hit with USB DACs. It was very noticible even on my "higher" end gaming rig. It's not the frame rate loss necessarily that's the most annoying but the lagginess.

 

[Scrith]

Yes, I've also experienced a slight loss of frame rate in some games (WoW, D&D Online, F.E.A.R.) while using a USB audio device, particularly when playing music (with Foobar2000) while playing (something I never had much of a problem with when using an E-Mu 1212M). It's not too bad, however; I don't plan on plugging the 1212M back in anytime soon. By the way, I'm also using a USB microphone as well (which probably makes the games that support it lag even more).

If your priority is a high framerate, I would recommend against using a USB audio device.

 

[Asr]

I guess a USB DAC is out of the picture then. Thx for the infoz.

 

[Malus]

I'm not so sure. I emulate WoW with Wine under FreeBSD and use a USB DAC and my performance is excellent. I think your mileage may vary.

 

[c001m4n]

This is a wild guess based on nothing but can the use of an USB mouse cause the apparent lagginess? I don't have an external USB DAC but someone should try it with the usb to ps/2 adapter for the mouse.

 

[lan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Malus I'm not so sure. I emulate WoW with Wine under FreeBSD and use a USB DAC and my performance is excellent. I think your mileage may vary.

Different OSes and different USB chipset will behave differently. It's a gambling game really.

 

[ChiasticSlide]

Is it really worth getting a dac for gaming? Quality audio isn't really a focus in games, so I don't know how much benefit you'd get out of a dac. Have you considered just going with a gaming card that has a breakout box?