ATI HD Audio enabled reduces 3D performance

[thilanliyan]

http://www.hardware-infos.com/...hp?news=3025&sprache=1

Apparently having the HD Audio device enabled decreases (up to 5%) the 3D performance in games so the card is not running at full potential.

Would going into device manager and disabling the device work or do you have to uninstall the device driver?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

It says disabling it increases performance; the site doesn't say anything about uninstalling the driver. They even say HD audio is "running all the time" even if you don't have HDMI hooked up, so I would imagine just disabling the driver would be enough to get the increased performance.

 

[dguy6789]

I ran some tests using a TF2 timedemo and disabling it in device manager and there was no performance difference at all between having it on vs off after numerous test runs.

 

[vj8usa]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I ran some tests using a TF2 timedemo and disabling it in device manager and there was no performance difference at all between having it on vs off after numerous test runs.

You sure you were GPU limited though? Even with 8xAA at 1680x1050 on my 4850, I'm mostly CPU limited in TF2.

 

[dguy6789]

I'm not sure I'm GPU limited, but I don't really have another 100% repeatable test I could run that also has sound. All of the benchmarks I know off hand don't have sound.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Use fraps. I wouldn't take any type of conclusion from a TF2 timedemo.

 

[vj8usa]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I'm not sure I'm GPU limited, but I don't really have another 100% repeatable test I could run that also has sound. All of the benchmarks I know off hand don't have sound.

Does having sound even matter? I just assumed having the audio device enabled would cause the hit. Whether or not the benchmark has sound couldn't matter unless you were using the video card for audio as well, right?

Or maybe I'm wrong and it computes audio for applications even when not the primary audio device.

 

[SSChevy2001]

Well I disabled the High Definition Audio Controller, and there's no performance difference with Crysis or FarCry 2.

Also I'm currently just running a DVI connection, so maybe this only affects people that use a HDMI connection?

 

[yh125d]

dguy, try the far cry 2 benchmark if you have it, it has sound and will definitely GPU limit you

 

[dguy6789]

I don't have Farcry 2 unfortunately. I figured you would have to have sound playing for any performance difference to be noticed.

I ran the TF2 benchmark again this time with 8xAA and 16xAF. Three times on each setting. The first time is right after opening up TF2 and the next two times are just running it again after the previous benchmark without closing the game. For reference I was getting a little over 100fps consistently on this benchmark with 0xAA and 0xAF.

With HD Audio Enabled:

1451 frames 17.364 seconds 83.56 fps (11.97 ms/f) 17.936 fps variability
1451 frames 15.735 seconds 92.22 fps (10.84 ms/f) 11.160 fps variability
1451 frames 16.147 seconds 89.86 fps (11.13 ms/f) 11.009 fps variability

Average is 88.54FPS

With HD Audio Disabled:

1451 frames 15.527 seconds 93.45 fps (10.70 ms/f) 13.831 fps variability
1451 frames 15.669 seconds 92.60 fps (10.80 ms/f) 10.801 fps variability
1451 frames 15.869 seconds 91.44 fps (10.94 ms/f) 11.204 fps variability

Average is 92.49FPS

I don't have time really to do 20 or so runs on each setting to get a more accurate comparison. It does look like there is indeed a small little boost though. Thoughts?

Edit: I went ahead and ran 20 runthroughs of the benchmark with 8xAA and 16xAF on each setting and there was no difference between the two settings overall. Both were between 90 and 92 fps on every run of the benchmark. The averages were virtually identical. I think it's safe to say that for the most part, enabling or disabling the HD Audio has no tangible effect on performance.