NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra: Biostar's Performance Surprise

Audio Performance

We limited audio testing to the Rightmark 3D Sound version 2.2 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.

The Realtek ALC-850 was tested with the recently released 3.82 driver set. The Realtek audio drivers do not support more than 25 3D buffers at this time, so the scores cannot be directly compared to the HDA Mystique 7.1 and Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-FI cards in the benchmarks.

The Realtek ALC-850 codec has average CPU utilization rates with reductions of up to 37% in the 3D tests compared to the previous driver release. The HDA Mystique 7.1 Gold has the highest overall utilization rates of the audio solutions tested, but its scores improved up to 20% with the January driver release. BlueGears is no longer supporting the card directly, but HDA continues to offer support. The Realtek ALC-882 performance is equal to the ALC-850 and offers significantly better audio quality. The Sound Blaster X-FI has the lowest rates, with the Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit solution on the Gigabyte board following closely. Let's find out how these results translate into real world numbers.

The audio performance numbers remain consistent as the Realtek ALC-850 consistently finishes behind the HDA Mystique 7.1 and SoundBlaster X-FI except in the Serious Sam II and Splinter Cell benchmarks. Serious Sam II has an average loss of 21%, Half Life 2 at 23%, Splinter Cell at 2%, Battlefield 2 at 26%, and F.E.A.R. at 7%. While the output quality of audio with the Realtek ALC-850 is acceptable for desktop usage, it is not for games that rely on 3D sound for effects and atmosphere. The audio quality in music and video remains somewhat hollow and flat in our subjective testing.

Obviously, if you are a serious gamer, then a dedicated sound card is still a requirement to ensure consistent frame rate averages across a wide variety of games. We noticed in previous testing of our Battlefield 2 and Half Life 2 benchmarks that the ALC-850 would stutter momentarily in intensive scenes. The 3.82 driver release has now eliminated stuttering in the BF2 and Half Life 2 benchmarks.