Asus enters the sound card market, good or bad?

[FragTek]

Asus has recently shown a pair of new sound cards that will be released shortly. Both cards have the same specs and utilize high end C-Media chipsets. One version will be standard PCI and the other version will be PCI-E.

Have a look at the article to read more about it. I think it looks like it will be a great card, pending final street price. I will definitely be looking at picking up a PCI-E model since all of my PCI slots are now full.

Source ---> http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4860

 

[Doddsy]

It does look pretty cool, hopefully asus will be good with their driver support.

 

[FarFarAway]

If Asus get decent drivers then I think one of my PCI-E slots will be taken up by one

 

[FragTek]

It does look pretty cool, hopefully asus will be good with their driver support.

That's the only thing that worries me. I think the hardware itself will be a quality piece of work, it's the lack of driver updates that could hinder it. And since the card is using a C-Media chipset (we think....) then that means Asus also has to rely on C-Media to put out timely driver updates as well.

We'll see, but from what I can tell so far this looks to be a very nice card.

 

[Joe]

Bad thing IMHO.

So its a Cmedia based card w/ all the optical compression you want for gaming. Audiophile 115BdSNr will be nice ... but there are some very similar products out there already just without the "Heatsink" Plate. OH and dont forget all vista sound for thsi card is Software rendered so is worse performance that the realtek on your MObo and it only has EAX2 .

Seriously if You need DTS/DDL get a card <<LIKE>> this but its feature set aint really much bebefit over the Realtek onboard @tm (spec 8** series).

 

[Toxcity]

Looking pretty!

I will be getting one, depending on the final price.

ASUS FTW!

 

[FragTek]

Joe, that's an EMI shield, not a heatsink

They claim it will pwn on Vista and be front, side, and backwards compatible with Vista

 

[Joe]

Joe, that's an EMI shield, not a heatsink

They claim it will pwn on Vista and be front, side, and backwards compatible with Vista

Lol thats y i had HS in quotes ""heatsink"" best way to ID it to the masses ...

an EMI shield tho interesting that they need it to get 118DB snr when the X-Fi doesnt .. perhaps a testament to the DACs Creative use or howcrap the ASUS ones are.

It supports HW accelerated EAX 2.0 and OpenAL under Windows XP but not Windows Vista since Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) is removed. Without that, games using DirectSound3D will be rendered in software mode without EAX. It doesn't affect new game titles since most of them run on OpenAL.

All 12 titles that use OAL

 

[FragTek]

Or 118 was achieved in a very controlled environment and perhaps Asus' incorporation of the EMI shield gives a more accurate result in a more common PC setup atmosphere?

All new games should hopefully be OAL enabled, and can older games be patched to use OAL?

 

[Joe]

Or 118 was achieved in a very controlled environment and perhaps Asus' incorporation of the EMI shield gives a more accurate result in a more common PC setup atmosphere?

All new games should hopefully be OAL enabled, and can older games be patched to use OAL?

MAyb but Remeba they (Asus and Creative) still use the same marketing *love* on their specs oh and Hexus et al have obtained SNr reading that seem to confirm Creative ..

IMHO the ''Heastink''/EMI shield is just making it modder friendly (a little lustre go along way in mod-world)

Hopefully they will be patched to OAL .. but My GTA games prob wont (too old and they have a nu engine soon)

 

[FragTek]

That also begs the question... Do old games such as GTA really have such good sound and immersion that you really need hardware acceleration?

 

[Joe]

That also begs the question... Do old games such as GTA really have such good sound and immersion that you really need hardware acceleration?

ACtually GTa3 was one of the first games where i actually felt the need for EAX the immersive gr8 surounding ... i may actually dig that disc up

 

[PP Mguire]

This looks like it might be worthy since i have XP. But like was said, final price will hinder my deicision becasue i dont have an X-Fi becasue of price.

 

[NickS]

Looks expensive.. :\

 

[Allsorts]

Definately a good thing. Creative have a monopoly over mainstream sound cards and some competition is welcome.