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Can volume have an effect on CPU performance?

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  • Performance
  • CPUs
Last response: in CPUs
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a b à CPUs
January 12, 2014 5:00:10 PM

I'm pretty sure it does due to some observations I've made, but I'd like someone else to help me confirm this. I have a superbly crappy laptop (A4-3305m APU) which I can't wait to replace but for the time being, I'm doing everything I can to ensure that I can get the most optimized performance levels out of this thing. It's CPU usage often reaches 100% on both cores in even the most menial tasks.

Anyway, on VLC media player for example, I didn't check my CPU usage but I noticed that on certain videos which already had high volume, if I tried to push the volume to 112% or greater the video would begin to artifact or the sound would cutout or distort. The same videos acquired from the same source worked fine at 200% on my desktop at home (FX-6300). So from these observations I'd say that volume eats up a good chunk of CPU usage, but again, someone to confirm this for me would be great.

Lastly, if this is the case and volume can have a large effect on CPU usage, I'm guessing that when paired with speakers, it'd be more optimal to turn my PC volume to 50% and then up my speakers to twice their usual volume, right?

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a c 393 à CPUs
January 12, 2014 5:05:12 PM

There should be no effect on your CPU performance, maybe it just has a really weak PSU.
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a b à CPUs
January 12, 2014 5:10:01 PM

What would the PSU have to do with it? For the record, this is a laptop with all its standard parts. If this was a PSU problem, I'd assume I'd be having things like random shut downs or something of that nature. A bad PSU wouldn't result in artifacting or sound cutting out.
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a b à CPUs
January 12, 2014 5:19:53 PM

Volume should have zero affect on cpu load. all of the processing that need to be done is done before the audio signal ever makes it to the speaker amplifier circuit. Could be an issue with heat generated by the audio amplifier circuit or as ewok93 said with week power supply however neither seems very realistic to me as both the load of a set of laptop speakers or an audio out signal will be so small (5 watts max for laptop speakers I am guessing)?
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a c 393 à CPUs
January 12, 2014 5:35:01 PM

It being the PSU sounds less ridiculous than it being the CPU. Weird anyway.
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a b à CPUs
January 12, 2014 5:59:05 PM

That is true I suppose
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