Winter Audio Reference: On-Board, Consumer, and Pro Solutions
by Derek Wilson on February 3, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Gaming Performance Tests
As game frame rates in modern systems are not heavily impacted by various audio settings, one of the best measures of "goodness" for games will be simply the maximum number and type of hardware buffers that the card supports. Beyond that, the RightMark 3DSound synthetic test can give an indication of what CPU usage will be like in gaming situations. Listed below are the number and type of hardware buffers that each card supports:
Intel HD Audio: 32 buffers 2D, 3D, EAX 2
Gina3G: 128 buffers 2D only
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS PPro: 62 buffers 2D, 3D, EAX 4 Advanced HD
SoundBlaster Audigy 4 Pro: 62 buffers 2D, 3D, EAX 4 Advanced HD
The fact that the Gina3G can open over twice as many DirectSound buffers as the Audigy gives it an advantage in its ability to push audio. But the target is definitely more of a home studio multi-track editing environment rather than a gaming environment. The Gina3G's lack of any 3D accelerated buffer support does make it less of a gaming audio card, as is to be expected. While the Realtek Intel solution provides EAX 2, it's able to provide adequate support for most games on the market.
There are titles out with support for EAX 3 and 4, and they do sound good. Games like Thief 3 and The Chronicles of Riddick make good use of audio to help the gamer actually play the game. Understanding an environment is becoming truly necessary in modern gaming. But we would prefer to see unique personal innovation or the adoption of open standards rather than consumption of proprietary technology.
The RightMark test simulates some normal positional audio effects and internally checks CPU usage every half second. Overall, CPU usage is averaged together at the end of the run. This is the number that we will look at here. Our graphs are broken into multiple series for 16 and 32 buffers, and we've done graphs for the "no audio" case, simple stereo, hardware 3D, and hardware 3D + EAX. Positional audio, in this case, is done via DirectX.
In our tests, we see the Audigy 2 outperforming the Audigy 4 in our DS3D and EAX tests. The Intel solution puts in a good showing as well, though Creative naturally does EAX better. In the 2D realm, the Gina3G doesn't do too poorly either. Note also, that we are talking about percent CPU usage here, so a score of 0.1 is 0.1% of the CPU. The heaviest hitting test comes in at under 5% CPU usage, which just goes to show how little impact even our least efficient HW 3D + EAX implementation has on overall game performance.
To round out our gaming performance analysis, we'll take a look at Unreal Tournament 2004. All the in-game graphics details were set to "normal" and resolution was set to 800x600. Higher settings pushed the rest of the system too high and drowned out the effect of the audio (as the graphics card became the limiting factor rather than the CPU). Call this artificial if you like, but showing that it takes this much to get a performance delta out of enabling audio is a useful test in and of itself. Especially considering the fact that these differences are bigger than what we saw with Doom 3 no matter what we did.
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REMF - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
i would like to see how the Via envy24 cards stack up against the newer Realtek 880 and C-media HD chips, as well as against CL gear.bbomb - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Please read his remarks before you go off crying that this round up sucks and you didnt do this card or that card. Read some of the comments in the commetns section and Dereks response before you spew out the same crap someone else has.He stated 6 posts above you soupy that these were done to creat a refrence point for each segment for future reviews of sound cards.
Perhaps you should remove the roundup part of the article title Derek.
ElFenix - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
i'll stick with the santa cruz for a while longer, i guess.Damien - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
I was surprised to not see the nForce 4 compared, given that it is one of the newest onboard sound components to support the latest gravy.Damien
soupy - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
no EMU cards? (0404, 1212). Those are some really hi-fidelity cards this review should've included. And yeah, there really has to be a good, solid sound system for reviews like these to be based on. All in all, this roundup was pretty bad.ProviaFan - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
#15 - Aardvark is dead. Sadly, because they made some good stuff, but they're not around any more, which means no driver updates, etc. :(For pro cards, you could try the MOTU 828mkII (maybe throw in a 24I/O or HD192 on the high end if you're going to cover that segment), the Presonus Firepod, and whatever Digidesign sells in that price range (comments on the Protools software would be required also if you're going to do that ;). If you wanted to go really high end, you could look at some Apogee D/A and A/D's... :D
Jigglybootch - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
I'm surprised there was no E-mu 0404 reviewed. It goes for about the same price point as a plain Audigy 2 ZS, but blows it away in every category.Also surprised by no Revolution 7.1/5.1 review.
segagenesis - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
#19 - I second that. However, I have not seen (or rather havent looked hard enough?) something since the soundstorm that does realtime AC3 out. And yes, please include at *least* the Revolution 7.1 in a future review. Maybe you should thrown in your stock AC97 on most boards you see now (Realtek 6 channel, not Intel HD Audio) just to show the difference between them and a $100+ card.I also fail to see the real benefit of Creative cards and hardware 3D audio when to me its always sounded like the game is in a cave or some other overdone (or underdone!) effect. Ok maybe you get a few extra fps but I have always played games using Miles Fast 2D/3D audio without complaint.
YMMV
mcveigh - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
you really should have had something with the via envy 24 chipset in there. there are so many boards out with one of those variants. personally I would have liked to see M-audio (or who ever they are now) revo 7.1 AND 5.1 as the new 5.1 is supposed to have better DAC's I've heard.EddNog - Thursday, February 3, 2005 - link
Mr. Wilson, please don't forget to mention the importance of bypassing the Kmixer resample stage. ;-)With even a merely decent system, the difference is obvious.
-Ed