Winter Audio Reference: On-Board, Consumer, and Pro Solutions
by Derek Wilson on February 3, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
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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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SkillS - Friday, June 13, 2008 - link
Pleas Do not review audio cards here,your knowledge of the subject is highly limited,
your testing methods with adapters for christ sake are more then questionable,
your pairing of pro audio cards with "demands" like EAX are laughable ,
and it all leads to one thing - Confusing Buyers,
Please stop this nonsense.
Stick to something you DO have a clue about.
NEVERwinter - Monday, April 11, 2005 - link
so..., where's the roundup?I'd like to see these cards (compared to those already in the article):
envy24 (terratec DMX xfire 24/96)
envy24ht (terratec aureon universe, audiotrak prodigy 7.1, m-audio revolution 7.1)
realtek alc850 onboard
nvidia nf2 soundstorm
turtle beach santa cruz?
lynx, emu, motu and digi002 is also a good addition
by the way, i read somewhere that revolution 5.1 has better DAC than revo 7.1. is that true?
flachschippe - Thursday, March 10, 2005 - link
That should be "head-related *transfer* function" (HRTF), not "head-related transform function". The transfer function of a signal-transferring system is the reaction of the system's output signal to an impulse input signal.S0me1X - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
#83For the pure digital out card, go with AV710 because it can be flashed with Prodigy 7.1 firmware. Then you can install Prodigy 7.1 drivers (which are much better than Via's OEM drivers). This gives bit-perfect digital out for only $25.
Note that the AV710 only supports digital out via Toslink. So if your receiver does not accept toslink, then EMU0404 is the only choice.
Link to AV710 on newegg
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?desc...
Link to info about flashing to Prodigy firmware
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=75...
The AV710 has decent 2 channel analog out (in high res mode), but the EMU0404/1212 better.
DerekWilson - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
Disdain for 2 channel?I actually mentioned that I prefered listening to the dream theatre dvd in 2 channel ... i prefer all music listening in 2 channel actually ...
There are not many good 2 channel 24/192kHz DVD-Audio offerings out there ... does anyone have any good suggestions? Most of the stuff I like is mixed into 6 channel. Which just feels wrong for anything but techno or orchestral stuff that tries to put you at the prime listening point of a music hall or something.
Also, note I used rather nice 2 channel headphones while the sonic quality of my surround solution was no where near as good. It was more to test compatibility.
We are certainly open to suggestions on what and how to test to better suit our readers though :-)
Derek Wilson
sparky001 - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
#70 - S0me1XThanks for the comment on what I should use. I thought I should clarify. I need two seperate PC's (HTPC's) one is for my room and needs analog out. The other is for a the lounge room and will use digital out into an Onkyo 701 reciever.
What cards should I use for this?
#80.
Correct I would like to see the reviews a little more accomodating to 2 channel audio. All CD's are stereo and they are still the dominant format.
Maleficus - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
CSMR - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
Everyone's asking for so many things to be reviewed. It makes more sense IMO to do a general article on how to get good sound from a PC. Something for beginners, like the excellent articles on taking pictures which have appeared recently. PC audio is really quite simple; but you won't know how it works without digging for information.Gooberslot - Saturday, February 5, 2005 - link
I'd like to see the AV-710 and the Revo 5.1 reviewed. That emu 0404 doesn't look too bad either.I do wish the reviewer didn't have such disdain for 2.x solutions. Not everyone has room or money for a surround sound system.
LocutusX - Friday, February 4, 2005 - link
For those of you with Audigy 2's who want to get the highest quality possible from 44.1KHz sources - you don't necessarily need to spend the $$$ buying a new sound card.Instead, configure either Foobar or Winamp to resample to 48KHz in the output plugin. Both have versions of the high quality "SSRC" plugin available. For Winamp, you need to search for DirectSound 2.0 with SSRC output plugin. There is also an ASIO plugin with built-in SSRC resampling. The results of ABX double-blind tests seem to suggest that going this route is an effective substitution for one of the better Non-Resampling cards...