Audio Performance and Quality
RightMark 3DSound
This benchmark tests the CPU utilization of 3D audio on audio hardware. Here we tested the integrated audio on the A8R32 against the A8N32. The A8R32-MVP uses Azalia audio while the NVIDIA-based A8N32 does not.
RightMark Audio Analyzer
This test attempts to quantify the sound quality from an audio card by passing it on to a secondary sound card for evaluation. Our test setup passed the audio from the on-board sound to a PCI Creative Labs X-Fi card in order to complete the loop.
Rather than bring in 7 graphs for each audio card tested, I decided to include RightMark’s results that are in ‘just plain English’ rather than the complete audiophile numbers. If you are interested in those numbers feel free to email me and I’ll pass them on.
A8R32-MVP Results
A8N32-SLI Results
CPU Utilization between the two audio solutions remains very close through out our testing with up to 32 buffers. The A8R32-MVP motherboard did have the option for up to 47 buffers with EAX support but without competition from NVIDIA’s sound on those results we didn’t include them here.
You can see too that according to RMAA, the NVIDIA audio solution is well behind the A8R32-MVP’s ACL882 codec in terms of quality.
