05:23
Abdul Raauf
Today, I have two ASUS-related news in the same package, and while the first one should be very interesting for all gamers out there, the second is bad for ASUS, but pretty useful for those planning to buy one of their high-end sound cards revealed recently, if Creative's claims prove to be true. OK, so these being the topics, let's take'em down one by one, shall we?
First, it seems that the new Xonar DX PCI Express 7.1 audio card doesn't really offer full support for Creative Technology’s Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX) 5.0. In fact, Creative claims these cards don't have any support for EAX 5.0!
"With its recent driver updates, Asus is misleading its customers by suggesting that its sound cards now support EAX 5. Asus sound cards do not support EAX 5, nor do they support EAX 3 or EAX 4. There are a small number of PC game titles that specifically query the audio device on the system to see if EAX 5 is available before they will attempt to render more than 64 3D simultaneous audio voices. The new Asus drivers are falsely reporting EAX 5 capabilities in order to get these games to ouptut 3D audio on Asus sound cards," said Phil O’Shaughnessy, Creative labs' vice president of corporate communications.
Hummm... while the above may not look good at all, let's move to better things - what about a video card with 3 GPUs from ASUS? Now, that's more like it!
The upcoming Asus EAH3850 Trinity card will feature no less than three MXM modules with ATI Radeon HD 3850 graphics processors onboard, for a total of 960 unified shader processors, 48 texture units and 48 render back ends. No other details about the card are known yet, such as clock and memory frequencies, and ASUS hasn't decided yet if this interesting experiment should become a commercial product or remain in the concept stage. Why?
Unfortunately, the technological solution chosen may rise the price of this new card above $500, while its performance may not be much higher than a HD 3870 X2 card, currently priced around $450.
While ASUS officials didn't comment on this story yet, it would be interesting to see such a product on the market, but only if its performance will match the price, because otherwise, they may end up with a new Voodoo 5 6000 in their sleeve...
First, it seems that the new Xonar DX PCI Express 7.1 audio card doesn't really offer full support for Creative Technology’s Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX) 5.0. In fact, Creative claims these cards don't have any support for EAX 5.0!
"With its recent driver updates, Asus is misleading its customers by suggesting that its sound cards now support EAX 5. Asus sound cards do not support EAX 5, nor do they support EAX 3 or EAX 4. There are a small number of PC game titles that specifically query the audio device on the system to see if EAX 5 is available before they will attempt to render more than 64 3D simultaneous audio voices. The new Asus drivers are falsely reporting EAX 5 capabilities in order to get these games to ouptut 3D audio on Asus sound cards," said Phil O’Shaughnessy, Creative labs' vice president of corporate communications.
Hummm... while the above may not look good at all, let's move to better things - what about a video card with 3 GPUs from ASUS? Now, that's more like it!
The upcoming Asus EAH3850 Trinity card will feature no less than three MXM modules with ATI Radeon HD 3850 graphics processors onboard, for a total of 960 unified shader processors, 48 texture units and 48 render back ends. No other details about the card are known yet, such as clock and memory frequencies, and ASUS hasn't decided yet if this interesting experiment should become a commercial product or remain in the concept stage. Why?
Unfortunately, the technological solution chosen may rise the price of this new card above $500, while its performance may not be much higher than a HD 3870 X2 card, currently priced around $450.
While ASUS officials didn't comment on this story yet, it would be interesting to see such a product on the market, but only if its performance will match the price, because otherwise, they may end up with a new Voodoo 5 6000 in their sleeve...
Posted in: Computer Hardware
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