Sound Card, increase FPS?

I\'m going to try to boost my notebooks ability to game, and I\'m thinking of an external sound card.  Now wouldn\'t an external Soundcard take some pressure off the cpu and raise performance, or would the addition of USB slow it down?  

I\'ve googled it but to no avail.  And would it even be worthwhile to add the soundcard to a notebook.

Yea, taking the sound away from the motherboard and onto a hardware based card noticably raised the FPS when tons of sounds came on.  There are exceptions to this rule but for the most part people get a dedicated sound card for gaming.

A simple way to test is to go into your BIOS and disable the onboard sound, then test out your games.

well I know about soundcards on a desktop, but I\'m talking external USB sound card for a notebook, do you think it\'ll be benneficial this way.  I just imagine the usb transfer taking more cpu power than it would be saving.

I\'m pretty sure the USB transfer is similar to the PCI transfer that works right on the motherboard, meaning you\'ll see performance gains.

[napolean dynamite mode] Sweeet![/]

thanks, I thought so but I needed someone to confirm my thoughts.

[§ôµÏG®ïñD]

onboard = cpu usage.. APU = non cpu usage...  Of course it will increase your fps. gezz..

[Evi]

[Yoda]Increase your performance, it will[/Yoda]

I was just double checking myself, I\'m not going to go and buy an external card and find out I wasted my money

it will, but barely

best bet is to upgrade the cpu and graphics card (if possible)

yeah, well I can\'t upgrade the gpu thanks to it being soldered but people who have this notebook have been playing HL2 in med to high settings with 30ish fps.  I\'m just trying to get ready for it\'s arivall with the goodies to squeek out a little more power.

Next paycheck I\'ll pick up a Gig of ram and maybe a 7200 rpm hdd.  I figure with those, ocing the vid card a little, and omega drivers, I should be able to play decently.

That thing sounds like it\'ll get hot!  I have a meager celery 1.5 with radeon 7500 and I have to take it off my legs because of the heat.

It might, but I\'ve been lurking in a forum dedicated to the little bastard and a couple people have them oced quite a bit with no complaints.  If it gets too hot I\'ll pick up a notebook cooler for 10 bucks or so.  Some of them are pretty sweet little setups, running completly off the USB port.