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ASUS Crosshair III Formula Motherboard Review
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 5:41 am
by Apoptosis
ASUS Crosshair III Formula Motherboard Review
The Republic of Gamers consists only of the best of the best and the ASUS Crosshair III Formula motherboard is no exception. With support of AMD AM3 processors up to 140W and top notch features like SupremeFX X-Fi audio, the Crosshair III Formula motherboard is about as good as it gets when it comes to the AMD 790FX/SB750 chipset combination.
Article Title: ASUS Crosshair III Formula Motherboard Review
Article URL: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1048/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $203.99 shipped
Re: ASUS Crosshair III Formula Motherboard Review
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 7:32 am
by Dragon_Cooler
omg its THE board I have been looking at since I got the X4 965. Thank you for the review!
Re: ASUS Crosshair III Formula Motherboard Review
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 7:47 am
by Apoptosis
Dragon_Cooler wrote:omg its THE board I have been looking at since I got the X4 965. Thank you for the review!
Yeah, that open box deal that I put in at the very end is a deal that is hard to beat...
$137.99
Re: ASUS Crosshair III Formula Motherboard Review
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 11:04 am
by Skippman
It's not like me to dig up old threads but I'm considering this board for my new build and had a question.
According to one reviewer on NewEgg you cannot do RAID 0 and run a SATA optical drive simultaneously. Is this true? Also, did you have any luck getting the EAX extentions to work in any games on this boards soundcard?
Re: ASUS Crosshair III Formula Motherboard Review
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2009 10:10 pm
by Gomeler
Been using this board as my daily desktop board, no problems with sound in games using the expansion audio card. Regarding the RAID issue, I'll try to test this next week when I start testing SB750 for a RAID card review. Could be a while before I get to these this though, kind of busy
edit: just realized you are talking about a specific feature of the card. Have a clear article explaining EAX? Audio isn't something I worry about, if it makes noise it works
Re: ASUS Crosshair III Formula Motherboard Review
Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 5:54 am
by Skippman
The aim of EAX is to create more ambience within computer and video games by more accurately simulating a real-world audio environment. Up to EAX 2.0, the technology was based around the effects engine aboard the EMU10K1 audio chip on Creative Technology's Sound Blaster Live!. The effects engine, an E-mu 8011 DSP integrated into the audio chip, was historically used to enhance MIDI output by adding effects (such as reverb and chorus) to the sampled instruments on sample-based synthesis cards (also known as wavetable). This effects DSP was also present on Creative's cards back to the AWE 32. However, the EMU10K1's DSP was more flexible and was able to produce not only MIDI output but also other outputs, including the digital sound section. A person who has been exposed to MIDI effects processors will quickly recognize the parameters that EAX controls, and the names of many of the presets.
Creative Technology, seeing the rising popularity and marketing significance of having a proprietary sound API, gave the functionality of this effects engine the name EAX. EAX is a library of extensions to Microsoft's DS3D API, adding environmental audio presets to DS3D's audio positioning. Developers taking advantage of EAX choose an environment for their game's setting and the sound card uses the mathematical DSP digital filter presets for that environment. The original EAX was quite primitive, only offering 26 presets and 3 parameters for more accurate adjustment of the listener parameters and 1 parameter for the sources. Each revision of the technology increased the available effects. EAX Advanced HD (also known as EAX 3) and up provide support for new environmental transitions, new effects, and multiple active effects. Further additions include smooth changes between EAX environment presets and audio occlusion effects (that is, a wall between player and sound source).
In addition to hardware devices, Creative also released EAX emulation drivers for computers with only onboard audio.
Basically EAX is a API created and patented by Creative Labs. Think of it as Glide or OpenGL for audio. It's a universal audio processing suite that can be driven either by hardware (as in Creative's EMU20K1 chip) or software. I can't find anything on ASUS's web site that lists whether this is a true hardware feature based on Creative's chip or they simply licensed the software API and have re-branded it as SupremeFX.