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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-883 was tested with the recently released 1.33 driver set. The Realtek audio drivers do not support more than 32 3D buffers at this time, so the scores cannot be directly compared to the Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-FI card in the benchmarks.

The Realtek ALC-883 codec has competitive CPU utilization rates when compared to the Realtek ALC-882 and ALC-850 codecs. The ALC-883 offers significantly better audio quality than the ALC-850 based systems and very similar audio quality to the ALC-882. The ALC-883 is actually a value based design of the ALC-882 while offering nearly the same audio quality and performance. In our subjective headphone testing, we noticed a slight difference between the two codecs with the output from the ALC-883 sounding clearer in the mid-range tones. However, the difference was negligible when utilizing our 5.1 or 7.1 speaker setup in a typical room environment. The Sound Blaster X-FI has the lowest overall rates with the ALC-883 solution following closely. Let's find out how these results translate into real world numbers.

The audio performance numbers remain consistent as the Realtek ALC-883 consistently finishes near the SoundBlaster X-FI in our benchmarks. Serious Sam II has an average loss of 41%, Battlefield 2 at 19%, and F.E.A.R. at 3%.

The output quality of audio with the Realtek ALC-883 ranks with the ALC-882 as the best of the on-board HD audio solutions that we have heard and continues to improve with each driver release. The vast majority of users should have no issues utilizing the ALC-883 as their primary audio solution, considering the overall quality of audio and performance at this time.

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 and, in the case of the Sound Blaster X-FI, improved audio quality. The audio specifications for the ALC-883 can be located here.