5.1 sound in games - does it make game slower?

[MultiForce]

It uses the CPU to process sound as they just put in the south bridge chip to get rid of some noise interference with the MB.

[lynx]

It is purely a codec.

If you look at Analog Devices page for this product, here, you will see it is a codec.

It is difficult to tell if AD make an Audio processor for computers, if they do it would come under the heading Audio Signal Processor, which you will find separately in the table of contents on the left.

[djkemp1]

thank you for the info, so would it make a huge difference then do you think running games as i am with 5.1 sound? or is it hardly noticeable?

[zzzMonster]

Not all onboards are codecs - at least I think nvidia soundstorm is not only a codec

[djkemp1]

the one i have by the sounds of it is, but would this hinder performance a lot, or is it barely noticeable?

[optimus_prime]

man, i told you on the first post
to make valuable claim about that one, one would have to have specs of game you're playing and your whole hardware.
it's much more easier for you to turn off 5.1, try game then turn it on, try game again and conclude if it indeed does or does not affect performance on your machine.
that's much more reasonable than asking people on forum to guess

[lynx]

Replacing an on board codec with an add-on audio processor will give you benefits no matter whether you are using 2 channel or 5.1. Typical problems are jerkiness and freezing. Obviously, the more you ask of your processor the worse the problem becomes.

However, this may be less of a problem with dual core processors, I can't give a definitive answer because I haven't tried dual core with just an audio codec.

As was said some time back, can't you just try it? It only takes seconds to change back if the performance is unacceptable.

Getting an EAX capable sound card would certainly make a difference though.