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Main => Software Forum => Topic started by: sanousuke on January 06, 2005, 01:46:47 am

Title: zinc and sound card question.
Post by: sanousuke on January 06, 2005, 01:46:47 am

Amazing! Alot of the games ran slowly with sound on, but when I turned sound off, every game runs 100%!

I am using an integrated sound card. I read somewhere that integrated sound cards use up your cpu, but non integrated uses it's own cpu.

So my question is, if I get a new sound card, will I beable to play zinc with sound the same as when I had sound off? I just wanna know before I buy a new sound card. Thanks!

Title: Re: zinc and sound card question.
Post by: Howard_Casto on January 06, 2005, 07:26:14 pm

system specs might help

Title: Re: zinc and sound card question.
Post by: sanousuke on January 07, 2005, 01:27:39 am

Sorry. Heres specs:

1.7 intel celeron cpu.
384 mb ram.
ge-force fx 5200, 128 mb, pci.
40 gig hard drive.

Title: Re: zinc and sound card question.
Post by: HaRuMaN on January 07, 2005, 06:18:00 am

It should definately help.  I don't know if it would put you up to 100%, but it's worth a shot I think.  A sound card is almost always better than onboard sound, IMHO.  You should be able to pick up a decent one for fairly cheap.

Title: Re: zinc and sound card question.
Post by: sanousuke on January 07, 2005, 03:58:07 pm

As long as it will help a little, i'll give it a shot.

Thanks.

Title: Re: zinc and sound card question.
Post by: elvis on January 07, 2005, 04:33:56 pm

Read the various websites and WIP's by the zINC, M1 and MAME authors.  There is a lot of information there to help you understand what is going on when you play an emulated game.

Games like Tekken3 are known to have very difficult to emulate sound chips, and result in massive slowdowns even on fast systems.  I wouldn't bother changing your sound card unless 100% of games showed the problem.  If it's only a couple, then don't waste your cash.

The emulator authors spend a great deal of time documenting their coding process, and makeing their comments available to the public.  If you experience any problems, your first ports of call should be the included README, followed by the author's website.  Most of the questions answered on these boards are answered elsewhere already.

Title: Re: zinc and sound card question.
Post by: Howard_Casto on January 08, 2005, 01:53:59 am

Sound card theory.......

sound cards generally take up 10% of our resources when you are playing a game (any game, not just emulated)

good sound cards take up less (2-5%)  so unless your system was really under-powered (and it isn't)  a sound card isn't going to help

For the record all sound cards except super high end ones use system memory, it's just some do it more efficiently and handle some of the processing on board (like a good sound blaster)  so it's actually hard on the processor, not the memory. 

Title: Re: zinc and sound card question.
Post by: Layer01 on January 08, 2005, 07:59:04 am

huh fancy that, so would  adding a low end sound blaster 5.1 sound card actually be worse that living with an inbuilt mobo 5.1  ???