Intel Motherboards: Something Wicked This Way Comes...

Audio Performance

We limited audio testing to the Rightmark 3D Sound version 2.0 CPU utilization test and tested with sound enabled to show the performance effects on several games. The Rightmark 3D Sound benchmark measures the overhead or CPU utilization required by a codec or hardware audio chip.

As you can see, none of the onboard audio solutions were quite as low in CPU utilization as the Abit AudioMAX 7.1 solution. The Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal uses the "almost standard" Realtek ALC850 found in most high end NVIDIA AMD SLI systems. The current drivers limit the 3D sound buffers to a maximum of 25.

The Battlefield 2 numbers are highly disappointing as the Gigabyte 8N SLI Quad Royal implementation of the Realtek ALC850 sound solution creates a 27% loss in frame rates in this highly popular on-line game in which sound is as critical as frame rates. Both Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Wolfenstein Enemy Territory have an acceptable loss of 10%. Obviously, if you are a serious gamer, then a dedicated sound card is a requirement.

While the Realtek ALC850 codec offers acceptable CPU usage and sound for most office applications or internet based flash games, it is not competitive in audio quality with the MSI P4N Diamond or Gigabyte GA-8I955x on-board audio solutions.

We are still finalizing our expanded audio testing suite and will introduce this in the near future along with results from the MSI P4N Diamond and Gigabyte 8I955x Royal boards.