[happycamperjack]

   
I've heard about that since the day it was announced. As someone who wanted GPU audio processing to happen since GPGPU designs burst onto the scene with the GeForce 8 Series, I say it's about time!
 
But I also don't want to find myself in the predicament of unable to max out the audio features in any given game because I don't have the TrueAudio DSP...or getting that DSP and then having to give up CUDA, PhysX, ShadowPlay and all those other NVIDIA-exclusive features, along with having to buy a video DAC for my GDM-FW900 because the only cards with TrueAudio support don't have RAMDACs and thus don't have VGA output at all.
 
That's why I'm hoping for a full-compatibility CPU-based codepath with GenAudio's AstoundSound plugin, even if it is slower and eats up a lot of CPU cycles. Nothing like PhysX, where the CPU codepath is deliberately unoptimized and the fancier effects outright require an NVIDIA GPU for games to let you enable them.

It's easy to give up on CUDA cus OpenCL performance on AMD cards are a few times faster than Nvidia's cards. That's why Apple's using it in its new Mac Pro, and why Litecoin miners are using them to mine coins. OpenCL is the way to go!
 
As for PhysX, only game significant that uses it is Batman. So easy to give up to.
 
As for ShadowPlay, that's a feature that matters to like 1% of the gamers. And with AMD card you just get some FPS drop. So not a big deal if you ask me.
 
What you get instead with the new AMD cards is Mantle(it's gonna matter since consoles are using it), amazing computer performance (a 7970 can kick Titan's ass and more!), and new audio technology. They are way more important than some last gen gimicky features.
 
CPU based 3d sound positioning is gonna be a watered down version for sure as CPU is just not great at doing DSP optimized tasks. That's why AMD put it in their graphic cards in the first place. Believe me they would totally push it on their multicore cpus if they can. Their octa cores are pretty unutilized most of the time.
 
But you can't get a high end AMD card right now anyway. Sold out everywhere. 

 

[Schonen]

   
That's a common myth I've had to explain many, MANY times over.
 
It's not hardware acceleration as a whole that got removed in Vista onward, it's DirectSound3D specifically. OpenAL is completely unaffected, and this is why ALchemy, DS3DGX, 3DSoundBack, etc. work for restoring hardware acceleration to DS3D games in the first place. Think of it like the audio equivalent of 3dfx Glide.
 
 

Yea, I kn ow that but thought only Creative soundcards offer that via Alchemy? I actually have an X-Fi Extreme music installed in another PC on Win7 and have OpenAL and Alchemy installed, very few, if any, modern games support it and it is for older games that had EAX.

 

[NamelessPFG]

It's easy to give up on CUDA cus OpenCL performance on AMD cards are a few times faster than Nvidia's cards. That's why Apple's using it in its new Mac Pro, and why Litecoin miners are using them to mine coins. OpenCL is the way to go!  
As for PhysX, only game significant that uses it is Batman. So easy to give up to.
 
As for ShadowPlay, that's a feature that matters to like 1% of the gamers. And with AMD card you just get some FPS drop. So not a big deal if you ask me.
 
What you get instead with the new AMD cards is Mantle(it's gonna matter since consoles are using it), amazing computer performance (a 7970 can kick Titan's ass and more!), and new audio technology. They are way more important than some last gen gimicky features.
 
CPU based 3d sound positioning is gonna be a watered down version for sure as CPU is just not great at doing DSP optimized tasks. That's why AMD put it in their graphic cards in the first place. Believe me they would totally push it on their multicore cpus if they can. Their octa cores are pretty unutilized most of the time.
 
But you can't get a high end AMD card right now anyway. Sold out everywhere. 

 
Tell that to Just Cause 2's GPU Water Simulation option, or RAGE's GPU transcoding...though for the latter, I surprisingly found out that a modern Haswell CPU is more than up to the task when Kentsfield wasn't. Still, I do wish devs would utilize OpenCL instead of CUDA, or at least offer both, depending on which GPU you're using.
 
PhysX may not mean all that much, but I do admittedly like the few UT3 maps that use it and the added particle effects in Warframe.
 
ShadowPlay has me in that 1%, because I'd rather not waste valuable CPU resources on real-time video encoding. I'd like to see AMD offer something similar, but they haven't right now.
 
I also forgot to bring up G-SYNC; that's gonna be huge going in the future as it incurs greater adoption in the monitor space. It doesn't benefit my GDM-FW900 much, but neither do the current RAMDAC-less AMD cards, and if I had to buy a new monitor in the future, you can bet I'll be picking one out with G-SYNC support.
 
As for Mantle, I'll only start caring when I see some real-world figures and support. Until then, it's just another 3dfx Glide to me, another graphics API that'll get left behind as time goes by. You remember the days when every GPU manufacturer had their own 3D API, right? Only a few games used the non-Glide ones, usually bundled OEM releases, and a lot of 'em got shut out once Direct3D and OpenGL became dominant.
 
If the CPU codepath does become watered-down, then I sincerely hope AMD puts the TrueAudio DSP on their cheaper cards AND allows it to function without it being the primary graphics adapter, unlike NVIDIA and all their exclusive features. That could be enough to win me over.
 

Yea, I kn ow that but thought only Creative soundcards offer that via Alchemy? I actually have an X-Fi Extreme music installed in another PC on Win7 and have OpenAL and Alchemy installed, very few, if any, modern games support it and it is for older games that had EAX.

 
ALchemy's the best-supported DS3D wrapper out of what I have experience with. 3DSoundBack kinda sucks, to the point where I actually set up modified Realtek drivers with X-Fi MB support instead just to get ALchemy and Creative's software OpenAL renderer. Finally, I haven't touched DS3DGX because I don't have any Xonar cards.
 
Even if modern games don't utilize the X-Fi DSP itself, you can still reap the benefits of CMSS-3D Headphone. It still performs admirably when having to emulate a 5.1/7.1 speaker system.

 

[happycamperjack]

Just Cause 2 and Rage were ok games, but they are not blockbuster titles like Battlefield 4, which is getting Mantle anytime now. Same as many other EA games coming up. Why does Mantle matter compared to other silly APIs and glide? Because of consoles. Both PS4 and Xbox One can run something similar to mantle, so they can port the optimized console codes directly to crossplatform games. Without the consoles I would not even look at Mantle as anything serious. 
 
Low end cards like 260x has TrueAudio too, you could get that I suppose. Not sure how that would work in conjunction with Nvidia card though. Nvidia certainly doesn't like AMD cards using nvidia cards as PhyX accelerator.
 
As for G-Sync, that's the only thing I'm looking forward to for nvidia. But monitors using it would cost about $150 to $200 more just for that for at least half a year because of its FPGA chip. For that much money you could very well get a better card and raise the overall framerates. G-Sync is a great step forward for gaming though, I look forward to seeing how AMD would respond to such a technology. 

 

[NamelessPFG]

Just Cause 2 and Rage were ok games, but they are not blockbuster titles like Battlefield 4, which is getting Mantle anytime now. Same as many other EA games coming up. Why does Mantle matter compared to other silly APIs and glide? Because of consoles. Both PS4 and Xbox One can run something similar to mantle, so they can port the optimized console codes directly to crossplatform games. Without the consoles I would not even look at Mantle as anything serious. 

Low end cards like 260x has TrueAudio too, you could get that I suppose. Not sure how that would work in conjunction with Nvidia card though. Nvidia certainly doesn't like AMD cards using nvidia cards as PhyX accelerator.

As for G-Sync, that's the only thing I'm looking forward to for nvidia. But monitors using it would cost about $150 to $200 more just for that for at least half a year because of its FPGA chip. For that much money you could very well get a better card and raise the overall framerates. G-Sync is a great step forward for gaming though, I look forward to seeing how AMD would respond to such a technology. 

Speaking of BF4, I've seen nothing to win me over from BF1942 and BF2...to say the least, I don't like what they've done to the series' gameplay formula since BF:BC2.

The multiplatform, console-compatible API aspect of Mantle may be one thing to entice developers, but I don't foresee devs pulling a reverse-RAGE and neglecting the D3D/OGL renderer in favor of the Mantle renderer, completely screwing over NVIDIA users becaus NVIDIA doesn't want to support Mantle. Not that I even know how that will work if Mantle is largely dependent on the GCN GPU architecture while NVIDIA goes and does their own thing...

To be honest, I'm not looking forward much to the 8th generation of console gaming, not with the way the industry's heading, and PC gaming will get dragged down too because of industry practices...

 

[KurtBlanken]

  a 7970 can kick Titan's ass and more!

I already get that you really like AMD, but cut the hyperbole.

 

[happycamperjack]

  I already get that you really like AMD, but cut the hyperbole.

Haha I wish. Let's take Litecoin mining for example. Titan will get you about 366 Kh/s, a 7970 will give you 750 Kh/s! This aint's BS man, go google Litecoin mining comparison.

 

[happycamperjack]

Speaking of BF4, I've seen nothing to win me over from BF1942 and BF2...to say the least, I don't like what they've done to the series' gameplay formula since BF:BC2.

The multiplatform, console-compatible API aspect of Mantle may be one thing to entice developers, but I don't foresee devs pulling a reverse-RAGE and neglecting the D3D/OGL renderer in favor of the Mantle renderer, completely screwing over NVIDIA users becaus NVIDIA doesn't want to support Mantle. Not that I even know how that will work if Mantle is largely dependent on the GCN GPU architecture while NVIDIA goes and does their own thing...

To be honest, I'm not looking forward much to the 8th generation of console gaming, not with the way the industry's heading, and PC gaming will get dragged down too because of industry practices...

Yea BF4 is ok, good game, but not revolutionary. Remember those good old BF1942 days when you successfully dive bomb a tank felt like winning a lottery!
 
As for Mantle, it's not an exclusive API, meaning you can use it in conjunction with D3D and Open GL, much like the Nvidia's own low level APIs. So it would be quite easy to port those optimizations over to the PC side. 
 
As for the state of gaming, really? The consoles using x86 and basically PC graphic cards is the best thing to happen to gaming. We'll see a lot more games being ports from consoles to PC. Win win for everyone!

 

[NamelessPFG]

Yea BF4 is ok, good game, but not revolutionary. Remember those good old BF1942 days when you successfully dive bomb a tank felt like winning a lottery!  
As for Mantle, it's not an exclusive API, meaning you can use it in conjunction with D3D and Open GL, much like the Nvidia's own low level APIs. So it would be quite easy to port those optimizations over to the PC side. 
 
As for the state of gaming, really? The consoles using x86 and basically PC graphic cards is the best thing to happen to gaming. We'll see a lot more games being ports from consoles to PC. Win win for everyone!

 
Yeah, I remember those days. I still feel BF1942 had the best vehicular combat overall, to be honest!
 
I do understand that Mantle isn't an exclusive graphics API; there's nothing stopping developers from including multiple renderers. Remember that UnrealEngine1 shipped with no less than FIVE renderers: software, 3dfx Glide, Direct3D, OpenGL and S3 MeTaL, and now we have updated OpenGL, Direct3D9 and Direct3D10/11 renderers available!
 
However, programming these extra renderers costs developers time and money, and that's where they have to make the call on which renderers should get more attention. I still remember certain old games where the Direct3D renderer had some graphics glitches, so they actually looked better with the Glide renderer wrapped into Direct3D or OpenGL. For Mantle to take off, that extra cost of implementing it must be minimal and the performance gains significant to justify their investment.
 
When I comment on the state of gaming, I don't mean the hardware, but the software. It's the games themselves that don't excite me as much from the typical blockbuster AAA development studios. The recent Battlefield titles are just one case of this; about the only things for me to really look forward to right now are smaller indie games like Mighty No. 9 and Hyper Light Drifter, with the one really big-budget title being Star Citizen, which incidentally IS going to support Mantle, but not for cross-platform reasons.
 
As far as cross-platform titles go...well, I'll just say that things like Dark Souls and now Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance are the exceptions, not the rule. I don't expect similar architectures to get all those Japanese developers to release more PC games alongside the usual console versions, and if they do, they'll probably still be console ports, just ones with possibly less technical suck aside from horrid KB+M controls.

 

[happycamperjack]

   
Yeah, I remember those days. I still feel BF1942 had the best vehicular combat overall, to be honest!
 
I do understand that Mantle isn't an exclusive graphics API; there's nothing stopping developers from including multiple renderers. Remember that UnrealEngine1 shipped with no less than FIVE renderers: software, 3dfx Glide, Direct3D, OpenGL and S3 MeTaL, and now we have updated OpenGL, Direct3D9 and Direct3D10/11 renderers available!
 
However, programming these extra renderers costs developers time and money, and that's where they have to make the call on which renderers should get more attention. I still remember certain old games where the Direct3D renderer had some graphics glitches, so they actually looked better with the Glide renderer wrapped into Direct3D or OpenGL. For Mantle to take off, that extra cost of implementing it must be minimal and the performance gains significant to justify their investment.
 
When I comment on the state of gaming, I don't mean the hardware, but the software. It's the games themselves that don't excite me as much from the typical blockbuster AAA development studios. The recent Battlefield titles are just one case of this; about the only things for me to really look forward to right now are smaller indie games like Mighty No. 9 and Hyper Light Drifter, with the one really big-budget title being Star Citizen, which incidentally IS going to support Mantle, but not for cross-platform reasons.
 
As far as cross-platform titles go...well, I'll just say that things like Dark Souls and now Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance are the exceptions, not the rule. I don't expect similar architectures to get all those Japanese developers to release more PC games alongside the usual console versions, and if they do, they'll probably still be console ports, just ones with possibly less technical suck aside from horrid KB+M controls.

Yea I hear you man. But this gen of console situation has never happened before, where all 3 platforms use the same architectures. It would be incredibly easy to port games from Xbox One to windows because of it, along with Mantle codes. Mantle performance is said to be 20% to 50% boost because the CPU draw overheads are eliminated. I think any big console game will without a doubt utilize it for upcoming games. BTW PS4 is supposed to have the same audio DSP as the TrueAudio graphic cards. So we can expect good PS4 crossplatform games to utilize TrueAudio as well. AMD has planted a trojan horse that's gonna really help them to win over the Nvidia shares of GPU market. (Their CPU still suck though)

 

[themunce]

  Hi PurpleAngel,
 
This sound card seems good, but its THX true studio and no CMSS-3D, the difficulty is to found the best actually sound card 2013-2014 which use CMSS-3D (don't want SBX, dolby or thx), i think its the best for gaming, but the sound card who use that aren't so good for music, do i need a Dac ?
The Amp seems nice!
problems is with the dac an keep the EAX and CMSS-3d, like i say i the first post.
 
ty for your response
 
 
EDIT : I see that the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD is THX Trustudio, but i see for game it use CMSS-3D and keep trustudio thx only for music or films,
 
Is it really that ?

The Titanium HD does have CMSS 3D. I know because I had one in my desktop, but the prices on one are stupid high, as I don't believe they are being made anymore. When I bought mine, I think it was like 80-90 bucks on Amazon. Now, they're over 300 on Amazon. It was a great sound card if you can find one.

 

[Trancefury]

Have there been any recent developments? What do you all think about a simple Soundblaster Z for the surround, output to an external DAC and Amp? It seems to be the suggestion of most threads, or just a Z + Amp.