Back in March, I wrote a detailed editorial on how hardware-accelerated audio is possible in Windows 11, and it's possible for sound card manufacturers to put native audio stack processing on the card to overcome issues with DPC latency spikes. Today, I'll talk a bit about USB-based onboard audio codecs, and how the Intel platform is better suited to handle them than the AMD platform, particularly given how motherboard designers handle the latter. The Intel "Azalia" high-definition audio (HDA) bus, introduced in the early-2000s, laid the foundation for high-quality onboard audio, offering consumers high-resolution 24-bit/192 kHz audio. This is a low-latency interface designed to ensure the quickest possible movement of audio data between the system and the DAC. On Intel platforms, the HDA bus tends to be wired out from the PCH (the chipset), whereas on the AMD platform, the HDA bus is located on the SoC (the processor), and not the FCH (the chipset). This was a deliberate choice by AMD, and has to do with the chipset bus the company uses.

Unlike Intel, AMD's platform designers adopted a "SoC first" strategy. Modern Ryzen client-segment processors are fully-fledged SoCs in their own right; while the chipset only serves to increase downstream platform connectivity. Ryzen SoCs put out not just PCIe lanes, but also certain platform connectivity, such as USB and SATA; while the FCH puts out additional USB and SATA connectivity. Traditionally, on the Intel platform, the processor only puts out PCIe lanes, while the PCH handles all other forms of connectivity, including USB and SATA; and of course the HDA bus. Intel is able to place the HDA bus on the chipset, while AMD avoids this. The HDA bus is instead put out by the SoC.