I've given in to the desire to play MOH:airborne and upgraded my GPU (okay, got one cheap on Ebay!)

Now my spec is

P4, 2.66Ghz (O/Cd up to 3Ghz)
2Gb RAM
X1600PRO GPU

Only trouble is- I'm running integrated AC97 sound.
Do the cheap £10 sound cards do anything to reduce the CPU load?
The techy websites can't make their mind up whether modern integrated sounds have that much of a CPU overhead....
Any experience on this?
I'm not planning on using soundsound BTW, I just want to max out the FPS!!!!

If I had a spare PCI slot I'd just buy one and put it in. Only trouble my PCIs are full, so I'd have to buy a USB faxmodem or tvcard as well....

Thanks for any advice

Try running a frame rate test in game, one with sound and one without, it should give you some idea if its significant

It might cost you 3 or 4 fps in a medium resolution situation but I think a sound card would do the same.

I think I'll run MOH:airborne without a soudncard and then if I'm desperate for a few FPS I'll get a soundcard!!!
I played COD2 with FPS around high teens / low 20s without a problem. Can't imagine it'll be worse than that!!!!!