Review- Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy
Review by Konrad Moszczynski, call sign: Omega X
May 10, 2002
Benchmarks:
Test System
- Athlon
XP 1800+
- KR7A-RAID
6N Bios
- ELSA
Geforce 3
- Creative
Audigy Gamer
- 2x
IBM 60GXP Raid 0
- Creative
Inspire 5300
Benchmarks
- Serious
Sam: The Second Encounter
- Unreal
Tournament
- Ziff-Davis
Win Benchmark Audio 99
A
popular benchmark also used is Quake 3 Arena but I chose to omit it from this
benchmark. Quake 3 Arena uses A3D which has been left to die by game developers.
All benchmarks were done at maximum settings under 1024x768 resolution.
The Sam Demo used was The Elephant Atrium. In this Serious Sam 2 demo there was clearly no performance drop. I thought the reason for that might have been the demo's architectural simplicity, but I was surprised to see the same results after running the demo with no sound at all. It seems that better drivers and more optimizations of the technologies in combination with a good sound card have virtually eliminated loss due to sound processing.
In Unreal Tournament we see a slight decrease in FPS. On average it was only 5-6 fps. In the UTbench demo EAX is utilized much more than the Serious Sam 2 demo because it is based inside of a complex enclosure requiring more 3D audio environments. Regardless the map the frame loss is low. You must also take into account UT is over 2 years old and newer games have many new optimizations. One can make the assumption that this is the reason Quake 3 Arena on average has a 20% loss of FPS due to sound processing.
Ziff-Davis Win Benchmark Audio 99
The
low frame loss is due to outstanding sound processing on the Audigy Gamer. As
shown in the above chart CPU utilization is very minimal even during tests which
required playback of samples that were of high quality and complexity.
Conclusion:
Creative continues to put out quality sound cards. The Audigy Gamer is a must for anyone looking to upgrade their sound card. If you have not yet experienced the EAX 3D sound environment you are missing out on a whole new level of gaming. The integrated FireWire port is a definite plus. Creative once again sets the standard for quality sound and with a price tag of $76 on Pricewatch.com it’s also a great value. I give the Audigy Gamer 10/10 beers!
Thank you for reading. Please bookmark us as your source for new computer hardware.
Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome.
Konrad Moszczynski, call sign: Omega X
10/10 Beers
Approximate Price:
$76- Audigy Gamer
