Audio glitches and crackling.. soundcard help

[theviewer1985]

hi guys

Ok so i know this sort of thing is constantly spoken about, but nothing which suits my scenarios

When I'm travelling, I produce from my laptop. Which is powerful (ish) - 6 gigs ram, 4 cores. However it is using onboard sound card. I have download Asio4All.

I get nowhere near the distance into a tune I'd expect to get before it gets un usable due to glitches and crackles. I barely get past the idea stage with say, 6 VST synths in use. If I disable audio, and re-enable it, it sometimes fixes for 10 mins or so. Also its worth noting that the ableton CPU meter seems to be spiking alot. It goes from 60% right up to over 100% (while my actual CPU meter on the laptop remains low)

I understand computers, so I keep everything clean and efficient. My knowledge lacks however, around soundcards and drivers. Like I say, I use onboard sound with ASIO4All... are there any soundcards which, "take the strain" of CPU usage that I can plug into a laptop?

My main PC is more then powerful enough. (6 cores, 16gig ram) - and i do get alot further into a track here. Almost through to completion (but i have to have my buffer at about 1024 where I hear of people getting down to 256) so even with this, I would benifit from the knowledge of soundcards/drivers.

On my PC I use the prosonus USB audiobox... would this take some of the CPU strain? And also, it seems the ASIO4ALL driver gives me less audible glitches then when i use prosonus' own asio driver... why is that i wonder?


IN SUMMARY for those that can't be bothered to read the above:
1. Do soundcards take CPU strain away from the computer and if so, which one would be worth while me buying for my laptop (and perhaps desktop aswell)

2. Why would ASIO4ALL driver perform better with my Presonus soundcard than the actual Presonus ASIO driver itself?

Side note for those who need to know: I use windows and i dont use any external hardware other than a midi keyboard

[theviewer1985]

Oh and i guess an important sidenote is sometimes, the CPU display in ableton is not touching 100% ... Like it can sit between 50 and 60% - but yet the audio is still glitching crazy amounts. This happens on my monster PC too and the workaround for me is to disable audio within ableton, and re-enable it


cheers