CPU Usage with Onboard Audio vs Audigy/Live

[pmistry 0]

I did some tests with my onboard audio, a Realtek ALC650 and ran some Quake 3 benchies. I got 212 FPS with audio enabled and 244 FPS with audio disabled.

 

I have an old SB Live hanging around, with Creative's drivers installed, I should probably get some of my FPS back right?

 

I am assuming that upgrading to an Audigy or Audigy 2 might make it even better?

[Immortal 0]

if the FPS are constanly over 100 then it doesnt matter. The human eye cant sense over 60-70FPS, so u wont notice a difference in gaming...

[Tomay 0]

Cpu usage is between 2-6% on my sb pci. There is a ZDbench audio test that measures that. You can check it out in many reviews.

[sapiens74 0]

Quote:

if the FPS are constanly over 100 then it doesnt matter. The human eye cant sense over 60-70FPS, so u wont notice a difference in gaming...

THats not tre


120 is the limit, and you can tell.

[jmmijo 1]

You can ;(

 

Hmm, perhaps it's more the person playing the game then anything else, and of course the particular game and/or benchmark you're running

 

Perhaps the best real world test is to actually play a round of multi-player or something that can simulate multi-player in a single-player environment.

 

I know that Diablo 2: LOD with many different mod's can actually slow down by quite a bit, this is due to the poor DirectX optimizations in the game and the fact that many mod's increase the amound of monsters and animations on the screen at once so this is most likely the issue, but it's a good test to see if your machine has any noticable lags and/or slow downs in the game.

[pmistry 0]

I know all about FPS and what the human eye can perceive. But for future games, I guess system performance will matter a bit later on...eh whatever.

 

Let see here, I put my SB Live card in and installed Creative's latest drivers. I got 222 FPS, which is nice.

 

I never really wanted to use my SB Live as it gave me headaches with my old VIA Chipset/Athlon PC. But now with my Intel chipset, its working really nice and sound is quite clean. Its better sounding right now than the ALC650.

[jmmijo 1]

Well the Avance Logic ALC650 Audio CODEC is both a software and hardware driven device. It's not bad for what it does but I personally like the Audigy/Audigy 2 cards better, especially when connected to a 5.1 speaker system

[pmistry 0]

I may look into getting an Audigy or Audigy 2 board. I would just want the sound card, so an OEM version for cheap is what I am aiming for. Will be looking around thats for sure!