On Sat, 3 Jan 2015, Yousuf Khan wrote:

On 02/01/2015 9:15 PM, hp wrote:
Ok, when did video cards take over sound processing for PC's ?
This did not register on my forebrain until several updates
pounded in that 'Hay, my video drivers package has sound drivers
too'.

What the hockey puck?

OldGeek perplexed

Ok, is there a way to return sound processing to the mommyboard??


It's still not really mainstream yet. It's available through a few mid- to
high-end video cards, both from Nvidia and AMD. Ever since video cards
started popping up with HDMI connectors, which have both video and audio
components to them, the video cards have become audio cards too. You can
still choose to send your sounds through the traditional motherboard sound
system.

But it also makes a certain amount of sense.

Now "audio processing" is likely decoding MP3s or however the sound is
encoded, along with decoding the video signal. There was a period (maybe
it still happens?) where some video boards did that decoding in hardware.
Now that the GPUs on video cards are so potent, it seems to make sense to
download that sort of audio stuff to the video board.

Michael