News AMD announces TrueAudio DSP for new graphics cards

AMD has revealed its new graphics cards will actually feature an audio chip too.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2013/09/26/amd-announces-trueaudio-dsp-for-new-graphic/1

 

wonder if they will sell that as a separate solution? using a low end GCN core just for sound?

 

I'm not an audiophile by any means, but I didn't notice the sound being any more immersive than my current stereo setup.

 

Best part of their presentation last night? Chris Roberts came on, presented Star Citizen, left... Numbers viewing dropped by half. I'm wondering if marketing departments around the world were watching that number.

 

Personally I don't see this being necessary at all. Considering how often CPUs are not the botteneck for games these days (excluding their memory controllers), I don't see audio processing being worth the investment, especially through a GPU. It was necessary back in the day when discrete sound cards had a noticeable audio experience improvement.

 

there is one definite advantage... for a decent low budget build one option to consider would be a kaveri apu and a mid range gpu working in dual graphics.... the biggest issue with the apus so far is that their cpu side is a little less that pleasing. it's not bad.... but it's not good. now if you add in that adding that card will give the cpu a bit of a break then you may increase the performance even more in a build that is already performing at a level FAR beyond a similarly priced system.

 

True, but the CPU portion of the APUs aren't anywhere near as bad as people think they are, at least for gaming purposes. Though, in addition to what you said, it is possible that AMD does stuff like this to help reduce CPU usage as a way to distract people from it's less-than-stellar performance, making the APUs a better value. Since AMD is so weak in the CPU department, anything they can do that prevents their CPUs from reaching 100% while in-game is something that can be compelling for customers.

IMO, AMD would've been better off putting triple or quadruple channel memory in their processors, unless that's already the plan for Steamroller (I don't see that being likely considering the motherboard situation).