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M-Audio Revo CPU hit, for real.

E

einsig

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 24, 2002
Messages
103
Can someone shed a little light on just how big a hit the m-audio revolution causes on the CPU in games? I assume this only occurs when you are enabling EAX or some other positional decoding that is done by the drivers and not the hardware. Meaning if I don't enable EAX or whatever else must be done in drivers, I won't see a hit.
 
What game, what vid card, what processor? The impact would, of course, be highly variable.
 
GodsMadClown said:
What game, what vid card, what processor? The impact would, of course, be highly variable.
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Well hardware is listed in my sig. :confused:

As for games...it doesn't matter to me. I'm just looking for people's experiences. If you can play UT2004 with minimal hit, that's good to know. If it kills your Far Cry framerate, that is good to know. I'm just looking for input/experiences in general.
 
zachary80 said:
Isn't EAX worthless anyways?
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That has got to be up for most worthless post of the year. With all due respect, how does that help me? I don't want to know if EAX is pointless...I'll be the judge of that. I'd like to know what kind of hit this thing gives when using any of the software decoded formats. Which, by the way, isn't limited to EAX.

C'mon folks. I know a lot of you have this card. Let me know what you think about it in terms of games. I really don't want to go down the Creative route.
 
With my AMD 2000+ o/c to 2200+ (pally cores rock) and 9600p, if I use 1024x768 with medium to high settings and EAX in Far Cry I get static and "jittery" sound somewhat, depending on the area. I don't notice much difference with EAX on or off anyway. The big isn't that bad, but it is noticeable in a few games. I would say 10fps max for me, and you much less. I'm poor, so no upgrade for the 2000+ =/
 
You've got a pretty nice CPU. I think you can spare some cycles for nice sound. What does EAX do, anyway?
 
StarWarsHater said:
With my AMD 2000+ o/c to 2200+ (pally cores rock) and 9600p, if I use 1024x768 with medium to high settings and EAX in Far Cry I get static and "jittery" sound somewhat, depending on the area. I don't notice much difference with EAX on or off anyway. The big isn't that bad, but it is noticeable in a few games. I would say 10fps max for me, and you much less. I'm poor, so no upgrade for the 2000+ =/
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Thanks man. That is what I wanted to hear.
 
in most cases, you'll lose about 10-15% performance when enabling hardware 3d audio. when using EAX, you'll lose another 10% as well. some cards get hit harder than others, so this is a general statement.

EAX stands for environmental audio extensions. it basically makes the environment you're in sound like it would in real life, in real time. so, if you were in a cave level, it would sound echoey (is that a word?) on the fly...so if you leave the cave, you leave that environment and the acoustical effects of that environment as well.

for more information about eax, you can head over to eax.creative.com
 
Is that what that crap is called? I remember it making Alpha Centauri sound very weird on my SB Live and I had a bitch of a time turning it off. Cry me a river that my Revo doesn't support it.
 
You wanna talk about CPU hits, I have an Audigy 2 NX and I'm running a reletively old P3 @ 1ghz. With USB 1 with the sampling turned up to 96khz and the 24bit turned on, only in stereo I can expect a 30% cpu hit right there... It's a good thing that I don't play many games besides like C&C and Starcraft. I'll play Oni once in awhile, but that was like a PS2 launch game and is hardly a workout for my dismal machine.
 
Y'all clearly haven't experienced Painkiller in EAX mode. If you have a set of 5.1, and you are a gamer, it makes no sense to get a soundcard that doesn't even have EAX support...that is unfathomable. Sound is a huge part of the gaming experience.
 
Matrices said:
Y'all clearly haven't experienced Painkiller in EAX mode. If you have a set of 5.1, and you are a gamer, it makes no sense to get a soundcard that doesn't even have EAX support...that is unfathomable. Sound is a huge part of the gaming experience.
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No, I havn't. But for the games I play (FPS mainly) I have found that I prefer a good pair of headphones over surround sound nearly any day.

Why do you limit it to 5.1? Don't most games still use 4.1 sound?
 
I run farcry on 1152x864 with aa at medium, aniso at 2, trilinear filtering, and all else at very high, with no noticible slowdowns. I'm sure that I'm losing frames with eax on but I don't notice it while I'm gaming
 
New games utilize 5.1: Painkiller, Far Cry, UT2K4. This may simply reflect the latest driver revision from Creative, ie. EAX HD and EAX 4.0 drivers, but on my Audigy I can get 5.1 sound from any source without using mediocre propietary CMSS.

Even if you are only using headphones, EAX applies anyway, to any sound setup from headphones to 7.1.
 
Matrices said:
New games utilize 5.1: Painkiller, Far Cry, UT2K4. This may simply reflect the latest driver revision from Creative, ie. EAX HD and EAX 4.0 drivers, but on my Audigy I can get 5.1 sound from any source without using mediocre propietary CMSS.

Even if you are only using headphones, EAX applies anyway, to any sound setup from headphones to 7.1.
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If the game truly outputs 5.1, you don't need EAX ;)
 
True but that is semantics. They output the 5.1 through the EAX. I don't think games would sound very good in pure 5.1 anyway, since you need EAX environmental effects to accurately reproduce the acoustical characteristics. I suggest you fire the assault rifle in FC with 5.1 EAX if you can. It is a real treat.
 
Matrices said:
True but that is semantics. They output the 5.1 through the EAX. I don't think games would sound very good in pure 5.1 anyway, since you need EAX environmental effects to accurately reproduce the acoustical characteristics. I suggest you fire the assault rifle in FC with 5.1 EAX if you can. It is a real treat.
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eeek.gif


So are you saying a pseudo 3D sound solution is better than a true 3D surround sound (ie. Dolby Digital, DTS...etc...)? EAX is simply a predefined sound library and some effects. It simulates, not reproduce. If you want to "...accurately reproduce the acoustical characteristics...", you want Dolby Digital or better
 
Is there a game that doesn't use "predefined libraries and effects"? And while you're at it, can you show me a game that uses "true 3D surround sound"?
 
I think there _may_ be one or two games on the horizon that might utilize DD5.1. Frankly, I am not up to date with all the latest audiophile acronyms, as I am not one of them. I am a gamer, not an audiophile.

If you want to use DD, then you need not only a good receiver for decoding, but you need a set of digital speakers with SPDIF, no? I don't know if developers will find it worthwhile to encode a whole separate track for that limited a crowd when EAX is already the industry standard.

How do you intend to "reproduce" when you are talking about gaming environments? That doesn't make sense. And why is every 5.1 solution that's not purchased by the Dolby corporation "pseudo" 5.1? It's not like EAX 5.1 is upmixed stereo if the game supports EAX HD.
 
Now that we've all discussed the merits of discrete 5.1 and matrixed positional effects a la EAX, can someone recommend this card or not? I'm 99% sure I'm getting it. I've actually heard it with music and it is stellar, far beyond any Creative product. However I just want to make sure it is game-able.
 
Well, it can't be "game-able" if it's missing something as basic as EAX. Obviously you will have sound, but you will be missing a lot of the experience, in my opinion. Also, I think you are seriously exaggerating the difference between the Audio Revo and the Audigy 2 in terms of sound quality.
 
Matrices said:
Well, it can't be "game-able" if it's missing something as basic as EAX. Obviously you will have sound, but you will be missing a lot of the experience, in my opinion. Also, I think you are seriously exaggerating the difference between the Audio Revo and the Audigy 2 in terms of sound quality.
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I think the Revo does support EAX (but not EAX HD) in its drivers.

And nope, I'm not exaggerating the difference in sound quality between the Revo and the A2. You see, even the A2 ZS resamples 44.1kHz audio to 48kHz using a horrible alogarithm. You'll definitely notice increased noise and distortion if you're listening to your CDs and MP3s, which would be subject to the Creative butchering of the resampling from 44.1 to 48. If you must get an A2 series, you must also try to acquire an audio player (such as Foobar 2000) that lets you do the resampling to 48kHz in software (thus bypassing Creative's craptacular resampling alogarithm) and allows you to bypass the infamous Windows Kmixer at the same time (using kernel streaming).
 
Is this the issue where if you use the Effects palette in the Audigy control panel it resamples at the worse rates? I read it resamples properly to 92 or whatever if you don't use the equalizer.

I guess it's a matter of what's worth more to you, I've never done an EAX2/3 comparison and don't know what the fundamental differences are. I can't imagine you'd be missing a whole lot if you're just using headphones anyway, as I imagine EAX3 main feature is 7.1 support.
 
Matrices said:
Is this the issue where if you use the Effects palette in the Audigy control panel it resamples at the worse rates? I read it resamples properly to 92 or whatever if you don't use the equalizer.
Click to expand...
Not quite. Regardless of whether any effects at all whatsoever on the A2 ZS are enabled, all 44.1kHz audio gets resampled to 48kHz in hardware via Creative's craptacular alogarithm. However, with no effects enabled, 96kHz and 192kHz audio don't get resampled at all (but 88.2kHz and 176.4kHz audio still gets resampled to 96kHz and 192kHz, respectively, using the same craptacular alogarithm that Creative uses for resampling 44.1kHz audio to 48kHz). However, any effects will invoke resampling to 32-bit/48kHz, plus enabling EAX will send all audio to the Windows DirectSound3D interface (and thus the Windows Kmixer). And all that is due to the fact that Creative's DSP knows only discrete 48kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz sampling rates.
 
ok, here's a breakdown for you guys.

EAX 1 and 2 are supported by about 99% of modern sound cards. From onboard AC97 audio to your Turtle Beach cards, they'll support up to EAX 2.

EAX 3, EAX Advanced HD and EAX 4 are ONLY supported by the Audigy family of sound cards.

EAX has NOTHING to do with 3D positional audio. It's an API that sits on top of direct sound 3d or open al and gives you effects like reverb, occlusion, obstruction, exclusion, environmental morphing, multiple reverbs etc. it does not calculate where audio should be positioned in 3d space. that's up to either direct sound or openal.

so, when you're enabling EAX, you're enabling the effects, not positional audio.

cheers.
 
- You can use Dolby Digital on any game if you have a nForce2 board with SoundStorm, regardless of whether the game "supports" it or not. 99% of the time, the logo on the box means nothing and the developer hasn't done anything extra to put it there. Sometimes there are optimizations for the chipset (it supports 64 channels). If you don't have a nForce2 board, you can't get Dolby Digital in any game. No, not even Far Cry.

- I've played Painkiller with and without EAX, using an Audigy 2 and my nForce2, headphones and a 5.1 setup. Frankly, I don't care much for EAX and never have. I can count on one hand the number of games I thought made good use of it. Echoes just don't thrill me.

- You will get a performance hit in games with the Revo. That's why I never use mine for gaming. Whether it matters or not will depend on how fast your system is and what graphical settings you prefer. I recently tried my Revo in City of Heroes, which I run at 1280x1024 on my 9800 Pro. In the more complex, outdoor areas of the city, I average 25 fps. Using the Revo drops it to around 15. Obviously, that's not acceptable.
 
Matrices said:
Well, it can't be "game-able" if it's missing something as basic as EAX. Obviously you will have sound, but you will be missing a lot of the experience, in my opinion. Also, I think you are seriously exaggerating the difference between the Audio Revo and the Audigy 2 in terms of sound quality.
Click to expand...

First off, I'm not exaggerating the difference in audio between the Audigy2 and Revo. I'm not going into details because that isn't my point with this thread. If you can't hear the difference that is fine, but some of us who have good ears, know and respect good sound Q and have the kind of system to use it want something better than Creative's crap.

With all due respect, is anyone actually reading my posts? People are just arguing about positional effects, matrixed 5.1 v. discrete 5.1, etc. Anyway, if you read my post you'd know that the Revo HAS EAX support, but through drivers not hardware. For like the 4th time...WHAT KIND OF HIT DOES IT GIVE WHEN USING CODECS IN SOFTWARE?! :eek:

Please, if you want to discuss audio that is fine. But if it isn't answering the questions at hand please just start a separate thread.

Thanks to the few of you who actually gave a candid answer instead of rambling on about different codecs and what not. I actually ordered the thing, so I guess its moot now, but I'd still like to hear some actual experiences.
 
Matrices said:
Also, I think you are seriously exaggerating the difference between the Audio Revo and the Audigy 2 in terms of sound quality.
Click to expand...

Just to answer your question I'll copy this from a user above because I don't have time, but ut pretty much covers it all. These drawbacks of the Creative cards are not present on the Revo.

"Not quite. Regardless of whether any effects at all whatsoever on the A2 ZS are enabled, all 44.1kHz audio gets resampled to 48kHz in hardware via Creative's craptacular alogarithm. However, with no effects enabled, 96kHz and 192kHz audio don't get resampled at all (but 88.2kHz and 176.4kHz audio still gets resampled to 96kHz and 192kHz, respectively, using the same craptacular alogarithm that Creative uses for resampling 44.1kHz audio to 48kHz). However, any effects will invoke resampling to 32-bit/48kHz, plus enabling EAX will send all audio to the Windows DirectSound3D interface (and thus the Windows Kmixer). And all that is due to the fact that Creative's DSP knows only discrete 48kHz, 96kHz and 192kHz sampling rates."
 
Einsig I think the other guy pretty much covered the aspect of what I was saying so no need for your own ranting and raving on the matter...

Anyway Soundstorm is meaningless for DD unless you are actually using the DIGITAL out. Soundstorm is inferior to Audigy 2 sound quality, anyway. Did your frame rate drop in that game to 15 FPS on that sound card while using EAX or just while playing period?
 
To sum all this up:

Why can't a soundcard maker design or produce one that is great for both gaming and music? It seems that any soundcard that's great for gaming requires the user to do lots and lots of work in order for it to produce even acceptable sound quality for music (it sounds horrible for music in default configuration). And those soundcards that are great for music either suck up so many CPU cycles for 3D position audio gaming or don't support positional 3D audio at all. And of course, the really high-end soundcards don't even support DirectSound at all, let alone the 3D APIs.
 
Well first off, most of you are just repeating what you hear from others. The algorithm used in Creative cards produce no abnormal artifacts during normal listening. It only becomes apparent when you are using test tones. The Revo is not a signifigant step above the Audgys in sound quality. Period. Before you people shoot your load over the Revo's quality I suggest you buy something besides multimedia speakers. I you still want EAX without the algorithm use an Audigy 2 NX. It doesn't use the Emu102k and therefore is not subject to the algorithm.
 
My MisterX pimeta and Ultrasone HFI-650 headphones must not be as good as your "real" Klipsh speakers, because I can hear the difference quite clearly with both my Audigy 1 and my Revo kernel streaming from Foobar.

Also, out of idle curiosity, I fired up Alpha Centauri (still a great game, imo) last night using my Audigy 1 and noticed the EAX reverb effect on the sound in that game. It sounded cheesy and fake and I intensely disliked it. I switched back to the Revo. YMMV, of course.

I keep the Audigy in my box so that I can switch to it if/when I ever play a FPS, but I can't remember the last time I've needed to use it. I hardly ever play FPS, however. If I ever grew to need the PCI slot that it's taking, I wouldn't hesitate to yank it.
 
Actually, it is. The Audigy 2 NX also resamples, but the resampling is done by the drivers that send the sound over the USB bus, not the chip. Regardless, it's still resampling that you can't bypass.

I also have to heartily disagree with your assertion that the Revo is not a significant step above the Audigy's sound quality. I'm not reporting what I've heard from others; I have a Revo, and Audigy 2, and a nForce2 mobo with SoundStorm all in the same system. I also use a set of Tivoli TDHT1 home theater speakers and a Pioneer receiver. They're far from top of the line, but they're not multimedia speakers. I have listened to all of my sound devices for a long time, and the sound quality of the Revo is FAR superior to the Audigy 2. Whether the resampling algorithm is solely responsible for that, I don't care. Of course, a cursory glance at any RMAA results from the two cards would have told you that.
 
Audigy 2 NX is not a solid option unless you _need_ portability. It doesn't do EAX effects onboard and outsources them to the CPU. Plus it uses a codec inferior to that of the internal Audigy 2s...I own an Audigy and can get an Audigy 2 for only 50 bucks, I also own a set of Logitech Z5300s. I'm not sure if in the grand scheme of things I need better sound, I'm satisfied with my current setup. With all the praise for the Revo it would be a clear upgrade path, but I like playing games, including FPS, and don't want to sacrifice there.
 
"...a cursory glance at any RMAA results from the two cards would have told you that."

A strage curiosity occured when I did. Amazingly the Audigy has lower corsstalk, lower noise, and better dynamic range. Sadly the Revo was stuck in the dismal 80's for dynamic range, whilst the Audigy was at a good solid 94.
 
Matrices said:
Einsig I think the other guy pretty much covered the aspect of what I was saying so no need for your own ranting and raving on the matter...

Anyway Soundstorm is meaningless for DD unless you are actually using the DIGITAL out. Soundstorm is inferior to Audigy 2 sound quality, anyway. Did your frame rate drop in that game to 15 FPS on that sound card while using EAX or just while playing period?
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I'll rant all I want. First of all, I started this thread with specific questions and 99% of the replies here have nothing to do with them (like your soundstorm v. Audigy2crappy4me post). I'm not asking for a debate in codecs, audio formats, Creative vs. M-audio, or any of the other ramblings. Second, I'm entitled to my opinion and the freedom to post it, so don't tell me not to post. You get to post your thoughts and so can I. Geez, I just want people's experiences with this hardware and so far only 2 people ahve given me anything of worth. With 2 pages I'd expect more actual [H]ard and on topic info...is that too much to ask?
 
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