Page 6 -- Benchmarks, Games

Benchmarks

We havent really benchmarked audio cards in the usual way, play a ton of games, record the performance hit, and make a pretty graph, in a long time.  This is mostly because the platform has changed, and while a lot of folks still use Windows XP, they wont be for very long.  Windows Vista and Win7 pretty much make sound card benchmarks not so useful.  It is my firm belief that audio in games is really good for enhancing the immersion of the game.  Due to the way the Creative drivers like to work, I only tested the Prodigy 7.1e against onboard sound, a Realtek ALC885.

Borderlands

This first-person role-playing game is set on the fictional world of Pandora, where you basically run around and shoot stuff.  It's also a ton of fun.  It also has some great sounds, from weapon sounds, environment sounds, and enemies that give themselves away (and run at you Serious Sam style).  After running around Rust Commons West for a bit as a soldier, I can say OH HELL YES!  All sounds were super accurate, very crisp, and all kinds of spooky.  The ambient sounds were very clear, almost 'breathing' in a way that was totally lost on the on-board 'Intel HD' sound. 

Battlefield 2

BF2 is a very old game now, but one that supports Creative's Advanced EAX 5 HD modes natively.  It may also be one of the very few that actually did, the other being Battlefield 2142.  There were some fairly striking differences between the on-board ALC885 and the Prodigy 7.1e.  While pretty competent, the on-board sound couldn't match the Prodigy 7.1e in Strike at Karkand.  Did you know, as you run in BF2 there's a rustling in the ear?  I suppose it's always been there, but I didn't really notice it until it played through the Prodigy 7.1e.  Other highlights were the clearer, more detailed sound in the environment, better sense of depth, and easy location of enemies.  Except the guy behind with the knife.  Couldn't hear that at all.  Either way, I'm still very impressed with the sounds in Battlefield 2; five years on and it still has great sounds.

Benchmarks were not very conclusive.  There is a hard cap that limited FPS to 100, which the test machine had no problem maxing out on either sound card.

Call of Duty 4

CoD4 has a lot of sounds working in it.  There's the voice-overs, the sound tracks, and then the sounds of battle, guns and whistling ordinance and the CO's orders.  Much of it is extremely well done, like all CoD games.  The on-board sound actually did a pretty good job of conveying the hectic atmosphere of the city fight in Charlie Don't Surf.  However, and you can probably guess what's next, the Prodigy 7.1e really turned it up to 11.  Not in volume, I match the output as best I can, but the overall detail and dynamic sound gave the city fight a much more alive feel.  There isn't much in the way of stereo depth in CoD 4, but localization of sounds, like the loudspeaker inside buildings, were slightly more accurate with the Prodigy 7.1e than with the ALC885.  This provided a little more realism and immersion to me, which makes this win instantly better than on-board sound!

While there are lots of sound cards out there, many just included with your motherboard, the Prodigy 7.1e easily produced more detailed and immersive sound.  I don't need to make the case for on-board versus discreet here, but to the degree which the Prodigy 7.1e is quite high and noticeable.