integrated sound card work with mame?

[big daddy]

I have 2 options for PC

-  Integrated 5.1 Capable Sound w/ front audio ports (free)
-  Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS with front audio ports (extra $65)
 
I know mame can use sound blaster compatable sound cards.  My question is, would it have any problems running on the integrated sound card?  Or should I upgrade to the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS?  Note this is an hp a710e if that helps.

[dabone]

If you are running under windows, either should work just fine.


Later,
dabone

[Bgnome]

i have never had problems with integrated soundcards.  pretty much all sound cards nowadays conform to the soundblaster standard and are "soundblaster compatible."  on the other hand, you really dont need to even worry about it unless you are using DOS or somesuch and need to figure out the soundblaster settings..

[Craig]

Some motherboard BIOSes have an option to set the prefs for the onboard sound so you can use it with DOS.

[krick]

For win32 versions of mame, either should work fine.

Regardless of what sound option you go with, you need to be concerned with CPU utilization.  If you're running a low powered CPU to start out with, having a bad sound chip sucking up CPU cycles can really hurt.

In general, onboard sound uses more cpu cycles than PCI sound cards, but this is not always the case.

You might want to borrow some sound cards from your friends and benchmark them against the onboard sound to see if the framerates suffer.