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Posted by Thomas
McGuire on October 03, 2001
Manufacturer: Hercules Product:
Fortissimo
2
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Performance
To
test Audio performance I put the Gamesurround up against
some other competing Soundcards, those being the Videologic
SonicFury, Philips Acoustic Edge & the Sound Blaster
Live! Platinum, although to be perfectly honest I don’t
consider the Live! Series to be the best choice if you use,
or intend to use Windows 2000 & as a result Windows XP
(Seeing that XP is based on the NT kernel it’s safe to
assume the Live!’s problems in Windows 2000 will be
present in XP also, but anyway).
For
testing the Gamesurround Fortissimo 2 it was installed into
the following system:
-
Pentium
3 700E (Using a 108Mhz FSB)
-
256MB
RAM - Mushkin High Performance REV2 PC133 222
-
Abit
SH6 Motherboard
-
Windows
2000 Service Pack 2
-
Hollywood
Plus DVD Decoder
-
6X
Pioneer DVD drive
-
Videologic
Vivid! XS
-
Diamond
Supra Max PCI Modem
-
17”
Philips 107E Monitor
-
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
All
latest drivers are installed & any other relevant system
updates. Unless noted otherwise BIOS settings & others
were set as shown in the appropriate Tweaking
guides.
Regarding
the number of 2D/3D streams available I used the Aureal
Minerva utility to determine this, the results being as
follows (Based on the Windows 2000 WDM Drivers);
Device
Selected: Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo II(tm)
DirectSound
reports...
1
Primary buffer available
94
Total 2D hardware mixing buffers available
94
Static 2D hardware mixing buffers available
94
Streaming 2D hardware mixing buffers available
94
Total 3D hardware buffers available
94
Static 3D hardware buffers available
94
Streaming 3D hardware buffers available
0
Total bytes sound card memory static buffer storage
0
KB/sec Data transfer rate to hardware static buffers
48000
KB/sec Max sample rate supported by secondary buffers
8000
KB/sec Min sample rate supported by secondary buffers
Minerva
is testing: <Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo II(tm)>
for: -
DirectSound
acceleration: <available>
DirectSound3D
acceleration: <available>
A3D
acceleration & compatibility:- <available,
compatibility not verifiable on this system>
The
number of 3D Streams available is quite great, although in
comparison to CS4630 Soundcards (e.g. Game Theater XP) it
offers 30 Channels less in total than those. This
shouldn’t really be a cause for concern though given that
there are few Games that utilize a significant number of 3D
Channels. Currently the only one I’m aware of that does
(Or rather, will) is DroneZ. Based on the Sound Options
menu in DroneZmark, options available for the number of
simultaneous 3D Audio Channels are 48, 64 or No
Limits. While I’ve no indication what the maximum
number of 3D Channels you could expect to be played in the
worst-case scenario (An additional 30 3D streams in unlikely
though), the Fortissimo 2 should be able to adequately
handle all of them.
Serious
Sam was tested using all available Audio Output modes.
Output Mode
|
No Sound
|
DirectSound
|
WaveOut
|
EAX
|
|
Hercules
Gamesurround
Fortissimo
2
|
65.9
|
61.4
|
57.6
|
60.2
|
|
Hercules
Game Theater XP
|
65.9
|
59.9
|
56.4
|
58
|
|
Videologic
SonicFury
|
65.9
|
59.9
|
56.4
|
58
|
|
Philips
Acoustic Edge
|
65.9
|
57.6
|
54.6
|
54.3
|
|
Sound
Blaster Live!
|
65.9
|
60.9
|
58.9
|
59.2
|
The
Serious Sam results as you can see are pretty great for the
Fortissimo 2, scoring the highest average frame rate in
DirectSound & EAX Audio modes, lagging behind the Sound
Blaster Live! in the WaveOut mode. Interestingly it
outperforms the Game Theater XP & SonicFury - this is
probably down to different Driver Builds over the
SonicFury/Game Theater XP or else the results should have
been pretty much equal to them.
Overall
performance in Serious with various Audio APIs enabled
seemed to perform slightly better than the other Soundcards
at my disposal. Performance in other Games seemed to be
about equal, or at least I noticed no major difference frame
rate wise with DirectSound3D/EAX enabled. I also tested the
Fortissimo 2 with Audio WinBench 99 & it produced
excellent results for CPU usage – although due to some
weirdness with the results for other Soundcards tested I
felt it best not to post the results lest they mislead
anyone.
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