Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3 Slim PCI Soundcard
Test Results - Gaming
Published: 4th September 2009 | Source: Asus | Price: £110 |
Gaming
I tested a wide range of games to see how the card coped with each game. FPS graphs below are from a small selection. Note that when EAX advanced options could be turned on, they were.
Note all 'Headphone' results on the graphs means that I set output on the card to be 2 channel in the drivers and in-game.
Unreal Tournament 3
An Unreal Engine 3 game as it is a fast, frantic and furious multi player mash-up experience. Using advanced DirectX 9.0c features, the Unreal Engine looks fantastic and has a lot of explosions all around to give that feeling of depth. PhysX was not enabled in-game.
Settings: 1920 x 1200, Very high settings. The UT3 Benchmark was used for all cards.
Kicking around with some of the other Asus cards, the performance is middle of the road here.
Again around the speed of the STX, the Asus HDAV 1.3 Slim doesn't vary much from the median here.
Quake 4
Quake 4 is a game built on the Doom 3 engine. This uses many DX 9.0c features based on OpenGL game. Once again I did three benchmark runs on Quake 4 on each card and took the average of all my readings from these. The Quake4Bench demo was used to benchmark all cards.
Settings were: 1920 x 1200, Ultra settings. 16 x AF, 4 x AA. Multi-CPU enabled.
Not wishing to disturb the pattern, the HDAV 1.3 slim happily sits neither top nor bottom of our results.
And again the card gets a middle of the road result.
Gaming sound
The gaming sound on the HDAV slim was decent enough and I didn't come accross anything difficult in particular whilst testing a variety of games. The FPS results show that the card doesn't degrade gaming performance particularly so there's not much to worry about here.
Having said that, the HDAV 1.3 Slim doesn't do the superb job that X-Fi based cards do, so if you're looking for a gaming card then I'd look that way, rather than at the HDAV 1.3 Slim.
Most Recent Comments
Yeah it gets half a point but I don't think a full point is warranted.
If a company wants to provide me with an ALC889a mobo I could review the audio, but I don't think they'd just be after an audio review
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If a company wants to provide me with an ALC889a mobo I could review the audio, but I don't think they'd just be after an audio review
QuoteJust an FYI (and tbh I can't believe it worked first time myself).
Got a thread to post in it's own right which may come sometime sunday, but:
Take 1x Abit IX48 GT3 (Onboard RealtekHD, just ALC888), DTS 5.1/7.1 available.
add 1x Quality built (even with loud cooler) EN9800GT gracious prize from ASUS
Throw in, Vista 64 bit, Q6600/4g.
Connect the spdif (optical) out from the onboard to the spdif (yep the gfxcard actually has an optical input aswell as a header for coax).
Download VLC, take a cheap 5m HDMI cable and connect it from ur Samsung L32 (setup as a 1920x1080i resolution), and hmmm we have audio whilst watching Matrix Revolution
Excuse the bumpage, but this hasn't worked since...
EDIT: Linky to HDMI cable £10 - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Labgear-Premium-Gold-Plated-Cable/dp/B000GHOT86Quote
Got a thread to post in it's own right which may come sometime sunday, but:
Take 1x Abit IX48 GT3 (Onboard RealtekHD, just ALC888), DTS 5.1/7.1 available.
add 1x Quality built (even with loud cooler) EN9800GT gracious prize from ASUS
Throw in, Vista 64 bit, Q6600/4g.
Connect the spdif (optical) out from the onboard to the spdif (yep the gfxcard actually has an optical input aswell as a header for coax).
Download VLC, take a cheap 5m HDMI cable and connect it from ur Samsung L32 (setup as a 1920x1080i resolution), and hmmm we have audio whilst watching Matrix Revolution
Excuse the bumpage, but this hasn't worked since...
EDIT: Linky to HDMI cable £10 - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Labgear-Premium-Gold-Plated-Cable/dp/B000GHOT86Quote
Might be my next addition to the HTPC...Quote
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Think these are the key things. Good to see that the pass-thru is not molested. Tipping the balance is the bundle.
U spend cash on a card that u may think is borderline too much and it hasn't got a good bundle and it makes it worse.
It has a front panel header on the pcb, does that qualify as atleast half a point deduction from it not having an analogue output ?
Great review, like to see u get ur hands on a mobo with ALC889a, like a Gigabyte flavor, just to see how u like it in comparison.Quote