ASRock 939SLI32-eSATA2: ULi Dual x16 SLI

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-660 HD audio codec was tested with the recently released 1.31 driver set. The Realtek DirectSound audio drivers do not support more than 32 hardware buffers and the OpenAL 1.1 drivers do not support more than 30 hardware 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 OpenAL 1.1 driver increases CPU utilization up to 20% more than the Realtek DirectSound drivers.

The Realtek ALC-660 HD audio codec has average CPU utilization rates with reductions of up to 4% 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 last driver release. BlueGears is no longer supporting the card directly, but HDA continues to offer support. The Realtek ALC-660 performance is equal to the ALC-850 (driver set 3.82, 26 Hardware Buffers available) and offers significantly better audio quality. The Sound Blaster X-FI has the lowest overall rates as expected. Let's find out how these results translate into real world numbers.

The audio performance numbers remain consistent as the Realtek ALC-660 continues to finish behind the HDA Mystique 7.1 and SoundBlaster X-FI. Serious Sam II suffers an incredible loss of 43%, Splinter Cell at 2%, Battlefield 2 at 28%, Call of Duty 2 at 5%, and F.E.A.R. at 4%. The output quality of audio with the Realtek ALC-660 is very good and continues to improve with each driver release. The majority of users should have no issues utilizing the ALC-660 as the primary audio solution, considering the overall quality of audio and performance at this time.

However, 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 Realtek HD audio codecs would cause stuttering in intensive scenes. The 1.31 driver release has now eliminated all stuttering in our current benchmarks while improving performance across the board except in Serious Sam II. We did not notice the same performance degradation in Serious Sam II with the 1.31 driver set and the Realtek ALC-882 codecs on the Intel chipset boards. We are still investigating this issue.

The Realtek driver installation installs a basic control panel that features a built-in 10-band equalizer along with the standard mixer and speaker controls. We found the control panel to be user friendly and a definite improvement over the standard windows audio properties application.