EAX

[thesnake]

hi

in most games those dayes they ask you if you want to enable eax

or not...can somone please tell me what is eax and dose it effect games and graphics speeds?  thank you

[Cyborg]

EAX is an sound effect library mostly available on sound cards by Creative.

By enabling EAX, if supported, makes the ingame sounds much more lifelike. Like, if you're in a cave in the game, the sounds will be mixed to sound like if you actually were in a cave, with echoes and such.

There are different versions of EAX providing better and better sound effects for each version.

Sound cards are way too underestimated these days. People want deadly graphics cards, but make do with an integrated sound card. What's up? The youngsters today don't know what sound is... They don't know anything about it. They listen to 128kb music through crappy headphones and enjoy it. You should feel ashamed of yourselves!

[thesnake]

yes your right about things there..ears are very importent insterments. but i assure you its the fult of the mother boards makers who are putting those small audio boxes in there cards.. i looked for a mother board without a sound card and i didnt find....

and still u didnt tell me would my game and graphics be slower if enable eax??

[Cyborg]

If you have a sound card, the card itself will do all the audio processing, relieving your cpu of the work. Even the EAX processing will be done by the card itself. Many people don't know this, but a sound card can improve game performance, since it saves your cpu for a little work.

However, if you have an onboard sound card, your processor will, in most cases do the audio processing even though you have... An onboard sound card.

To answer your question:

EAX does effect games in that it makes the sound more vivid. It should not effect game performance in any way (reduce your fps or such things), unless you have an onboard sound card that makes your cpu take care of the sound processing.

[Timenn]

EAX is great, it adds an environment to sound.

I believe it is possible to disable your onboard soundcard in the BIOS, and insert a seperate sound card and work with that one.

I agree with Cyborg, how can you be scared by a monster with a detailed model, high resolution textures and various expensive texture mappings if it isn't accompanied with a deep frightening roar rolling out of your speakers?

[thesnake]

yes i have an on board sound card, but i wont run out of CPU power because i have intell 3Hz hyper

threading and it can take the damage i guess..thank you all anyway for the info..and have a nice day.

[Cyborg]

I believe it is possible to disable your onboard soundcard in the BIOS, and insert a seperate sound card and work with that one.

Not only do we believe that; we know that. I always disable the onboard sound cards. They're garbage.

If you have such a good computer, why do you still use an onboard sound card? Oh, and your unspecified Intel processor does take a toll of mixing the sound by itself; however not a big one.

[Timenn]

Yea, but that "I believe" is just there so he can't sue me when I happen to be wrong (which is never, actually)

:P

[erjin999]

How about if the onboard soundcard is a creative Soundblaster live (with the stupid exclamation mark [!]) ? Does that still hit CPU usage ? Should we then take the LAN cards out off the mobo ? What about the other bits that have slowly found themselves part of the mobo (alright, I cant think of any other parts that have, but I am shure there are some...anyway, my point is...) ?

[Cyborg]

The ethernet cards on your motherboard use your processor too. If your motherboard came with integrated Creative Live!, Audigy or X-Fi, hell, even a Terratec sound card, I guess they'd do the audio processing on their own.

But why include expensive chips with the motherboard when you can buy them by themselves? That way you can choose your sound card.

[erjin999]

Well, I have the commen as muck Realtek Lan card, and I can buy that the card uses the CPU to drive it.

I agree with you, perhaps it is better to have everything modular and then we can choose what we want. but also thinking back to the time when ports used to be somewhat modular I shudder...

Somethings need to be built in, especially what I would think of as the less important stuff (by which I mean things most people dont worry about, nothing is uninportant on my mobo !).

[gryphon]

How about if the onboard soundcard is a creative Soundblaster live (with the stupid exclamation mark [!]) ? Does that still hit CPU usage ? Should we then take the LAN cards out off the mobo ? What about the other bits that have slowly found themselves part of the mobo (alright, I cant think of any other parts that have, but I am shure there are some...anyway, my point is...) ?

You can also have a WLAN AP onboard in your motherboard. But then you can also have a motherboard without a CPU. -gryphon got an "old" HP Alpha server which has no CPU on the motherboard. The Motherboard functions without the CPU which is located on a seperate slot. :)

My XboX360 also has an onboard soundcard btw. Sounds great when connected to my Sony ES ;)

[thesnake]

well as i said i didnt find a good motherboard without the sound card in

it and i didnt want to spend more money on an extra sound card as long

as it wont effect my cpu because it can handel it,or at least that is what

they told me..

[Cyborg]

Motherboards mostly don't come without ethernet- and sound cards today. The technology is so cheap, they throw it at you. However, the sound cards are lousy. I can't live with the thought of integrated sound. I get chills! I'd be losing my sanity listening to it... Ending my days in the loony bin. :'(

[gryphon]

think I saw an Aopen motherboard ones which had an intergrated tube amplifier. If you don't like cheap onboard sound mayby that's the one you want ?

[Cyborg]

I want a good sound card. A tube amplifier is not a sound card; it's an amplifier. I really like tube amplifiers for what they do, though.

But an integrated one? How can they do that? It's a crime against sound.

[gryphon]

I know.. .

it's the Aopen AX4B 533 btw.

[Cyborg]

Though a bit old, it seems, that is not a bad card!  :)

(It's AOpen, not Asus, by the way.)