Does anybody have an idea what using hardware acceleration would do if you don't have actual sound hardware? I'm asking because I'm running off a chipset (however, with Christmas approaching, I'm eying an actual card now) and noticed that Hardware Accel. was turned on in the INI. I've turned it off because I'm not sure its a good idea to be doing that, but would the presence of hardware accel. on a sound chipset cause problems with Oblivion (especially since Oblivion uses unoptimized MP3 format for audio)?

For those wondering, it's a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi integrated.

It works the same way whether or not you have chipset audio or a physical card. That slider is just a diagnostic tool.. it is only meant to be used like this - if you have audio issues, lower it by a notch. If it fixes it, cool. If it helps but doesn't fix it lower it more. If it doesn't do anything leave it alone.

There are a ton of misconceptions about it and frankly I don't believe it does anything at all on modern hardware which is why Microsoft removed it from Vista and Windows 7. Chipset audio is fine, it can play mp3s just fine... worked as game audio perfectly fine back on my pentium ii 400mhz. In fact, back on that computer I was having trouble with audio/video sync doing video capture and the 'solution' was to buy a real physical audio card. Which made it worse. The internets is full of bad advice when it comes to diagnosing PCs

Erm.... altering hardware acceleration when you don't have a hardware accelerated sound card might cause trouble, or, it might not. What it WON'T do is, improve performance.

On machines that do NOT have a hardware accelerated sound card, (and, incidentally, machines running Vista/Win7, whether they have one or not) turning it off completely is better all the way around. If you have H/A, play with the setting, and see what gives the best performance/stability.

Hardware acceleration support was removed from directx10, when vista came out. There is zero native support for it in either vista, or, win7. In order to use that nice expensive hardware accelerated sound card with either of those two operating systems, you are required to use some third party software, that intercepts the directsound calls, and converts them to OpenAL. THEN your nice expensive card does what you paid for it to do.

The reason it was removed, was to force sound to go thru the processor, so that certain DRM schemes would work. Thank the recording industry for that little tidbit. I am sure the manufacturers of sound cards were somewhat less than impressed with the idea.

Now, having a REAL sound card, with REAL hardware acceleration, DOES make a performance difference. ESPECIALLY on games like oblivion. This game is already pretty processor intensive, and removing the load of having to do all the sound processing WILL give you a performance boost, AND make your sound, sound better. Not to mention having a more stable game.

Creative were definitely not very happy, hence the release of ALchemy.

Well, I'm still using XP and DX9 right now (never bought any DX10 games), so that means I can probably still take advantage of H/A on this machine without the need for ALchemy. Now, would you have any recommendations as to what kind of card to buy?

In my experience, compatibility mode in windows 7 for windows XP SP3 would enable eax to work so I think that it enables hardware acceleration.

Except I'm not using Windows 7.

Creative XFI cards (except the XtremeAudio version) seem to work well. There's also a Turtle Beach card that a lot of people swear by.

OK, I think I've decided.

http://us.store.creative.com/PCI-Express-Sound-Blaster-XFi-Titanium/M/B001E25KDK.htm

Digital Audio, hardware acceleration, and if I shop around a bit, should fit the budget.