Intel Core Duo: AOpen i975Xa-YDG to the Rescue
by Gary Key on May 4, 2006 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
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-880 HD audio codec on the AOpen board was tested with the recently released 1.36 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 Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi cards in the benchmarks.
It is interesting to note the reduced CPU utilization with the Core Duo or Opteron 165 as the load is balanced between each processor with the Realtek 1.36 drivers and the Creative drivers to a certain extent. However, these CPU utilization rate improvements with the dual-core setup does not have any bearing on actual game benchmarks as the reduction in frame rate percentages are the same as our single core score.
The Realtek ALC-880 codec offers very competitive CPU utilization rates when compared to the Realtek ALC-882 on the Asus board. The ALC-880 generates significantly better audio quality than the AC97 based systems and very similar audio quality to the ALC-882 solution. The ALC-880 was released before the ALC-882 but has nearly the same audio quality and performance in our testing. Our subjective headphone testing revealed a slight difference between the two codecs, with the output from the ALC-882 sounding clearer in the treble and mid-range tones. However, the difference was negligible when utilizing our 4, 5.1, or 7.1 speaker setup in a typical room environment. The Sound Blaster X-Fi has the lowest overall CPU utilization (single core systems) with the ALC-880 and the ALC-882 following closely. Let's find out how these results translate into real world numbers.
The audio performance numbers remain consistent as the Realtek ALC-880 consistently finishes near the SoundBlaster X-Fi in the benchmarks. Serious Sam II has an average loss of 37%, Battlefield 2 at 28%, and F.E.A.R. at 2%. F.E.A.R. is extremely GPU limited so the CPU has additional cycles to generate the audio streams required by the Realtek drivers.
The overall output quality of audio with the Realtek ALC-880 ranks with the ALC-882/883 series as the best of the on-board HD audio solutions we have heard to date, while performance continues to improve with each driver release. The vast majority of users should have no issues utilizing the ALC-880 as their primary audio solution considering the quality of audio and performance at this time in most applications.
Obviously, if you are a serious gamer, then a dedicated sound card is still useful to ensure consistent frame rate averages across a wide variety of games, and in the case of the Sound Blaster X-Fi, you also get improved audio quality and EAX3/4/5 support. If you'd like more details on the Realtek solution, you can refer to the Realtek ALC-880 Specifications.
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Myrandex - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
Believe it or not, people can run 64bit apps for other reaons from 4GB memory...such as increased performance? I knwo not many apps right now show increased perofrmance with 64bit mode, but some do and I believe this will go up when more developers start programing for it with more intensity and all that.Jason
peternelson - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
For me this is the showstopper, and the reason I much prefer Turion at present.Core Solo/ Core Duo are 32 bit only. That makes them quite rarely disadvantaged - even the new Celerons can do 64 bit EM64T.
This board would be of much more interest if the review said "THIS BOARD IS MEROM-READY". As it doesn't, I assume it isn't. The review here might have highlighted this important issue which will be crucial deciding factor for some potential purchasers, especially considering the price.
I see Conroe and Merom systems quickly filling the market need this board is targetted at.
Gary Key - Friday, May 5, 2006 - link
Only disadvantaged for those utilizing 64-bit applications and operation systems, but for 95% of the marketplace they are fine. Not that I do not think it is an issue, but one that is way overblown in today's marketplace.
Probably in a couple of years it will be completely different but for now, 32-bit applications are still king of the hill (market share wise). This upsets me as I have to believe the entire migration path should have been completed by next year but the foot dragging between Microsoft and Intel negated AMD's advantage in this area for far too long. With that said, Merom takes care of the Yonah 64-bit issue in the mobile sector for Intel in a couple of months. It will be very interesting to see how it compares to Turion 64 X2, it will be good for all of us to have choices in the mobile sector.
We cannot quote on whether this board is Merom approved or not until qualification testing is complete. Will a Merom T7400 work in this board with the bios 1.3b, yes it will, and the initial results show a great deal of improvement over Yonah in certain benchmarks. Will Merom be fully supported by Intel and AOpen on this board, we do not know yet. AOpen is waiting a production spin of Merom before trying to the qualify it on this board and even then Intel might force everyone to Crestline for official support. We are still trying to figure out if Merom is going to work with 945GM as stated a couple of months ago. The entire situation is so up in the air right now that any statement has the potential to be wrong so being quiet is the best possible option. :)
johnsonx - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
from the spring idf article on AT:Now that may not be a 100% promise, but until Merom is actually released, there's no way to be 100% certain any given board will work with it.
Viditor - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
You mean 4GB or greater...at 4GB, a 32bit processor will be using PAE already.
And yes, I find that 4GB is a great help on a number of my apps...
Questar - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
Mobile/SFF apps?Name them.
Viditor - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
Photoshop CS2, Premiere Pro, and Mental Ray...
Questar - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
I'm a heavy Premiere user, and I can tell you it's a 32 bit app.Chadder007 - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
You can still run it under a 64 bit OS and have access to the 4gb or greater amount of ram.defter - Thursday, May 4, 2006 - link
No you can't. If you have an 32bit software then it can only address 4GB of memory.