On Board Sound, Is it a burden on CPU perforformance??

[xr8]

Can anybody tell me if these motherboards that have on board sound activated, have a performance drop associated with them being activated? If so then by what percentage approximatly?

 

[Gstanfor]

it depends on how the onboard sound is implemented, basically.

Implementations like VIA's AC97 codec found on KT133/KT133A/KT266/KT266A will suck cpu power dreadfully and still manage to sound pitiful.

Implementations based on the nforce use almost no cpu at all.

In between you get things like CMI codecs and creative codecs that are slightly worse than the same thing in a PCI slot.

Greg

 

[Booster]

I tested the VIA AC97 sound codec CPU utilization on my KT133A rig with AudioWinbench 99 and it showed the maximum CPU utilization was 1.5%, average - 0.5 -- 0.9%. And that with a Duron.

The same results (a bit higher, around 1.5 -- 2% max) were obtained with Avance Logic AC97 codec on my i815E-B rig.

Thus, I'm pretty sure an AC97 codec stresses the CPU much less than stand-alone cards b/c the CPU doesn't participate in the sound processing at all. This logic is built into the southbridge, thus sparing the CPU from extra calculations and PCI transfers.

Of course, the sound quality may not be great, I haven't noticed it, though, but it's more than sufficient for me for any mp3s, music and an occasional game b/c I'm not that much into sound and I naturally won't bother getting a separate sound card.

 

[kLezViruS]

Originally posted by: xr8
Can anybody tell me if these motherboards that have on board sound activated, have a performance drop associated with them being activated? If so then by what percentage approximatly?

OH cmon, with CPU processors going upwards of 2.1GHz+ who really cares about your onboard sound really sucking up "cpu performance"

 

[Mingon]

The tech report wrote a great article on sound cards, here .

 

[Mikki]

No difference on an Asus P4B533-E (c-media sound).

 

[xr8]

Thanks for the answers so far guys but what i have a further question :-

In Anandtechs recent roundup of KT333 motherboards he tested sound capabilities of all motherboardsand did a performance hit test under QuakeIII with sound turned on, was this showing a performance hit that the CPU in a real world apps and would these figures be any different with normal add-on cards????

Sorry about the detailed nature of the question.
Thanks XR8

 

[Booster]

Originally posted by: xr8
Thanks for the answers so far guys but what i have a further question :-

In Anandtechs recent roundup of KT333 motherboards he tested sound capabilities of all motherboardsand did a performance hit test under QuakeIII with sound turned on, was this showing a performance hit that the CPU in a real world apps and would these figures be any different with normal add-on cards????

Sorry about the detailed nature of the question.
Thanks XR8

My opinion is that add-on cards consume more system resources than AC97 codecs. That's b/c they're PCI devices, and the CPU has to access them through the PCI bus. As for AC97 codecs, the logic is built into the chipset southbridge, thus sparing it from PCI transfers. As different tests indicate, a high-end soundblaster consumes about 5% of CPU power regardless of the fact that it's a fully hardware card. Most recent AC97 codecs have CPU utilization figures of 2% and lower.

 

[paralazarguer]

I'm afraid that you're thinking is wayyyy out there. Integrated audio is still integrated into the PCI bus. Sooooo many reviews etc have consistently shown the audigy and tb santa cruz to have much higher FPS then EVEN C-media integrated audio. I'm afraid that integrated is still on the PCI bus as is onboard LAN.

 

[Gstanfor]

Most, but not all integrated audio has to work through the PCI bus. nForce is a noteable exception. PCI activity and overhead forms only a small part of the 800mb/s hypertransport connection between the north and south bridges - the onboard audio (as well as the built in IDE, etc all use the remainder of this bandwidth as necessary).

Greg