• And of course there was a short period of time where a sound card wasn’t required, but would actually improve performance by offloading audio processing to your sound card if you had one

    we are at this point in history, but for graphics cards :)

    • @AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      25 days ago

      Not in the same way, as you aren’t using the integrated gpu at all if you get an external one. I guess if you’re talking about shared ram this makes sense though.

      • I seem to recall the integrated sound wasn’t used either, when I had my sound card in - the audio connectors were going directly into the sound card.

        • @AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          15 days ago

          yea, IDK how it works as I’ve never had a computer back then, but the quoted reply makes it sound like getting a sound card would take load off of the CPU.

          • oh - my apologies, I forgot that on-board graphics have a dedicated chipset. Also, no idea whether on-board sound would have used CPU power back in the late days of soundcards, as the comment I responded to was claiming… might have been a sound chip for that, too…