The Asus Essence STX is a bit of a strange creature when you think about it. While it’s obviously not being aimed towards the gamer crowd, the inclusion of Dolby Digital Live!, EAX 2.0, OpenAL and DirectSound3D 2.5 actually makes it pretty competitive in the gamer market. If you are one of the growing numbers of gamers who are running through a receiver and big screen LCD or plasma, then the Essence is an option you should seriously consider. When combined with Vista, DDL can easily replace the loss of hardware accelerated audio.
With its high dynamic range, low stereo crosstalk, and excellent THD performance, the Essence STX certainly approaches within reference quality sound levels. The software is easy to use and intuitive, although the lack of application profiles proves to be a minor annoyance. The DSP modes help to enhance their respective target sounds, while the karaoke function is a neat addition that works pretty well.
However, it is important to note that we didn’t see the performance we would’ve expected above 20kHz for a high quality card. And while the Essence certainly did much better than our other cards, which don’t support 20+kHz sound frequencies, we still expect a high quality card to perform with some level of consistency. Instead, the Essence had a constant drop-off as it went up along the frequency spectrum.
The Asus Essence STX is being billed as a card for the audiophile, with its individual pre-amplifiers, swappable op-amplifiers, high SNR, and low distortion rate. During our testing, we were fully pleased with everything we heard coming out of the Essence, whether we were listening to music, playing games, or watching movies. While the software needs a bit of work to take into account the multi-taskers out there, the audio quality more than makes up for any little annoyances in swapping out DSP’s. The Asus Essence STX is currently priced around $199, and considering its feature set, that makes the HT Omega Claro Plus+ the only other real competitor in its class. While we haven’t had a chance to take a look at HT’s card, we can honestly say that for any person out there who considers themselves to be a true audio freak, they should consider the Asus Essence STX thanks to its excellent features and audio performance.
Elemental: War of Magic Brad Wardell Interview
Elemental: War of Magic is an unabashedly deep and complex PC exclusive, made by gamers for gamers, that melds the turn-based strategy and role-playing genres. It could only come from Stardock, a company small enough to take risks and innovate, but big enough that it can secure its own distribution and make those ambitions a reality. We were able to have a lengthy, in-depth chat with their fearless leader about Elemental, as well as the state of the gaming industry and Stardock’s role in it, so grab a beverage and read on!
Minecraft: The Coolest Game You've Never Heard Of
Minecraft is an indie sandbox game that has been getting a lot of attention from the press lately. The Alpha version is updated weekly by its creator Markus Persson (AKA Notch) and it has been sucking up my free time like a freakin’ vacuum. Not too often does a 15MB java app compete for attention with new releases from major studios…
What makes this game so special and why should you be playing it? Read on in today’s article!
Gigabyte Radeon 5830 Review
With dual fans and copper heatpipes, Gigabyte's Radeon 5830 board is designed for enthusiasts who value excellent cooling. See how this board performs and overclocks in today's review!
StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty Review
After 12 years of waiting, fans of Blizzard's StarCraft RTS finally have a sequel to play. StarCraft 2 focuses on just one race though, Terrans, and it lacks LAN play. Activision is also selling it for $60. With so many limitations, is Wings of Liberty worthy of the StarCraft 2 name? Vandy seems to think so...Read on for the full review!
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB Superclocked Review
If you're one of NVIDIA's board partners, how do you improve upon the GeForce GTX 460 GPU? If you're EVGA, you OC the board, add a lifetime warranty with their Trade Up program, and bundle the card with killer utilities for OC'ing and stress testing your graphics card...And don't forget a free game. See how the board fares in today's review!
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Performance Preview
Priced from $199-$229, the GeForce GTX 460 cards brings NVIDIA's Fermi architecture to new price points. And armed with 336 CUDA Cores, 7 PolyMorph Engines for tessellation, and high clocks, it doesn't disappoint when it comes to performance...and power or GPU temps. See how the board performs in comparison to cards ranging from the GeForce 8800 GTS to the Radeon 5830 in 3D gaming, PhysX, and 3D Vision in today's article!
Crank That S#!T Up! Contest
Interested in winning a liquid-cooled, 3-Way SLI GeForce GTX 480 Maingear PC with 22" 3D display? We've partnered with NVIDIA and Maingear to bring one lucky FiringSquad reader this top-of-the-line system. Benchmarks and pictures inside!
Introducing Joel Durham Jr
If you've been looking for fresh, new articles to read, good news: the wait is almost over. Our new EIC, Joel Durham Jr. introduces himself in this editor's letter.
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Performance
Intel is no longer the only game in town if you want a 6-core desktop CPU. The Phenom II X6 1090T packs six cores in a highly overclockable package that sells for less than $300. The CPU also features AMD's Turbo Core technology, which can OC the CPU's cores by up to 400MHz. See how it fares against the similarly-priced CPUs from Intel in today's article!
ATI Radeon 5870 3-Way Roundup
In the market for a new Radeon 5870 card? If so, you'll definitely want to check out today's article. Inside we've got three factory OC'ed 5870 cards from MSI, Gigabyte, and HIS. The Gigabyte board is OC'ed to extraordinary speeds, while MSI's Lightning card features 15-phase power and dual 8-pin power connectors. Finally, the HIS board combines custom cooling with high clock speeds. See how the boards compare to each other and the ATI reference design inside!