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| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21178 |   Yoda_Blues (263) Jan 14, 2009 - 04:04 pm
| Geez, I knew I forgot to mention something...
I've only had it installed for about a day, but it does to wake-up much faster than Vista and it didn't seem to suffer that annoying 3 minute re-recognitation of USB devices like Vista does. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21165 | Yoda_Blues (263) Jan 13, 2009 - 01:50 pm
| You're correct, perhaps replace was the wrong terminology to use there in regard to DDL section. However, I fully understand there is a big difference between hardware acceleration and DDL. I never meant to imply they were the same thing, only that the rewrite of the audio stack has necessitated changes in the way hardware is designed. Due to this, we have OpenAL wrappers that are meant to re-introduce the functionality lost from that re-write.
As for the comments on the 20kHz range, Asus includes a booklet on their testing results that shows they got a better result than we did. Now why that it is, I do not know. But my job as a reviewer is test a hardware manufacturer's claims. Our results did not match what they were claiming, so I pointed that out.
Finally, from the article in regard to the X-Fi RMAA:
"The X-Fi’s results were all over the place throughout all our frequency response tests. We tried tweaking the driver options, but we always saw the same result. Even following Creative’s guidelines for testing with RMAA did not give us different results. We are left to conclude that something must be happening either at the driver or hardware level that is altering the test results, but we were unable to find any answers as to what that was."
That should be pretty clear that the RMAA results for the X-Fi should not be counted against it, as we weren't getting accurate results. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21165 | Yoda_Blues (263) Jan 12, 2009 - 04:12 pm
| | I apologize about the lack of real headphone tests, my set of audio-technica's broke about a month ago and I haven't had money to replace them. I tested with what I had and decided to not sit on the card until I could replace my cans. However, please keep in mind that subjective tests are exactly that: subjective. This is why we used RMAA as a technical way of showing how the Essence performed. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21165 | Yoda_Blues (263) Jan 12, 2009 - 04:03 pm
| All your complaints I pretty much covered in the review. That's why the card did good as far as pure audio reproduction is concerned, but lost points in the usability areas.
It's really important to understand (and I'm pretty sure I said this in the review too, but maybe not) that the Essence is NOT a gaming card nor should it be considered in the same league. Gaming tests were done just out of curiosity. It performed pretty well in Vista (where the gaming audio playing field is leveled somewhat since audio acceleration was removed), so I thought it was worth mentioning.
A person who wants to change out op-amps or uses a $400 set of cans wants a good sound card for audio reproduction. The Essence fits in that role. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21158 | Yoda_Blues (263) Jan 11, 2009 - 11:23 pm
| | The faulty capacitor issue affected many board manufacturers, from Abit to Asus to MSI. Unfortunately, it wasn't isolated to one developer. (Hopefully) those days are long past us. MSI makes fine boards, I have old Athlon XP's still running as servers. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21163 | Yoda_Blues (263) Jan 11, 2009 - 11:18 pm
| Hardware audio acceleration is gone from Vista, probably forever. Keep in mind there are ways around it using an OpenAL audio wrapper, but Creative's solution (ALChemy) is lackluster at best. Other manufacturers have released products that perform on par with audio accelerated products, but Creative is the only one still holding out or charging extra for their surround bundles.
It's important to keep in mind that audio acceleration occurs at the kernel level, so bad drivers or code can cause a system wide crash. This was one of the leading causes of instability in previous versions of Windows. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21126 | Yoda_Blues (263) Dec 24, 2008 - 09:01 pm
| | Grinner, I can't nest anymore replies, but yeah, you mount it by screwing it through the mobo using the stock backplate. I haven't used 939 in awhile, so I can't remember if the holes are the same as AM2. If so, then I would imagine it would work fine. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21126 | Yoda_Blues (263) Dec 24, 2008 - 12:35 pm
| | Another thing to keep in mind is the speed of the fan. The reason why 80mm fans are so loud is that they have to run at high RPM's to achieve the same CFM as a larger fan. 80mm and smaller fans tend to run between 1800-2500 RPM's, while 120mm's usually run between 900-1800. This allows more air at slower speeds. The fan on the Domino runs at 2500 RPM's when on high, so that explains a little bit why it's so darn loud. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21126 | Yoda_Blues (263) Dec 22, 2008 - 03:46 pm
| | No, as of now, it is only available in a 120mm solution. Still, on medium settings, audio performance was fine since the pump and fan speeds auto adjust based on temps. And temps themselves were still excellent. High setting may be best of the best, but medium and low are both still pretty damn good. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21117 | Yoda_Blues (263) Dec 20, 2008 - 06:21 pm
| You're right, I hate that as well. I thought about including it, but ended up not because I felt people could always try not to play on them.
Then again, a lot of the servers I jumped on tended to have it enable, so maybe I should've. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21117 | Yoda_Blues (263) Dec 20, 2008 - 06:18 pm » Edited on Dec 20, 2008 - 06:19 pm
| Thanks guys, we try to do what we can here. We might not get every release, but we'll always try to get something up when we can.
As for Soldier36, don't worry about him. He's just upset we didn't review Far Cry 2 and give it our new "Walk around for 3 hours doing nothing" Award. It's just a habit we have of not reviewing games that are not worth our time. ;-) Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21048 | Yoda_Blues (263) Dec 01, 2008 - 11:11 am
| | Absolutely, I think I've made more friends on steam this way than any other way. I'll tell you what doesn't work...going up to random girls and asking for their steam id. They just give you strange looks...at least I think they were strange, its hard to really see anything after being pepper sprayed. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21048 | Yoda_Blues (263) Dec 01, 2008 - 09:49 am » Edited on Dec 01, 2008 - 09:50 am
| Fair enough, what I've found makes it so great is playing with my friends. You're right, having to buy a 2nd copy certainly sucks, but playing with all your buddies just makes it so worth it, at least to me.
We haven't heard anything from Valve yet, but I'd put money on something similar to what they've done with Team Fortress 2. Free updates every few months featuring new maps/campaigns. Plus, don't count the mod makers out. Some of the best TF2 maps have come from the community as well. Flag this | Edit this post |
| News Link » /news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=21048 | Yoda_Blues (263) Dec 01, 2008 - 07:59 am » Edited on Dec 01, 2008 - 08:00 am
| Yeah, we found the same thing when we reviewed it. The dropped connections can be frustrating. It has to do with the server system Valve went with. It looks they tried to make more like Live!, where you don't see the server you are joining. For us, it was more hit than miss, but hopefully a patch or two should iron out issues. Valve might not of anticipated the success of the game over, as it seems to be worse during peak hours.
Edit: This was meant to be a reply to mikey, oops Flag this | Edit this post |
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