Gaming Tests

We selected a few games that we enjoyed playing that we feel have excellent audio tracks.  Both EAX and none EAX games alike were tested keeping the tests balanced as much as possible in terms of audio effects and processing.  Your results and impressions may vary.

Call of Duty 2
This is one of the favorite test games.  The COD2 test version is outfitted with custom sounds edited and added by yours truly. Voices, directional cues, occlusion effects all sounded great.  Weapons also had a "woody" heft to the fire that made them sound more realistic.  Bullets whizzing by, explosions, yells and shots from behind had me turning in a reflex action.  The card produced a very open sounding audio-scape in this game.

Call of Duty World at War
Most of us here are fans of the Call of Duty series and can say we know most of the sounds quite well.  The HTHD 7.1 produced the light and heavy weapons exceptionally.  Not just a bang of bullets, there is more articulations such as the sound of the wood and the metal when reloading.  Directional audio was spot on, from the sides from behind...all sounded great.  The guns had a great heft to the sound making the game more immersive and exciting.  We played quite a few boards before realizing that we had gotten sucked into the action.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
This game has a great sound track; the acoustic guitars, old style pistols and shotguns are loud and have distinctive sound.  Playing the game in 5.1 surround allowed us to notice the games, directional audio cues for weapons such as bullets flying from one channel to the other.  Gaming dialog was produced very clearly.  In game dialog also had some excellent directional cues such as people speaking in the rear soundstage to people in the forward soundstage.  All the audio sounded excellent, the weapon effects and explosions sounded quite authentic.  The backing guitar in this game, the country solo guitar actually had a great deal of tone and an authentic sound on this card.  This musical backing was quite enjoyable part of the soundtrack sounding very real as opposed to just part of the back ground.

Gaming Summary
Although marketed to the home theater crowd, it is hard to ignore that fact this card is equipped with a hardware X-fi processor, designed and meant for gaming.  We tested a few other games in passing also but always came to the same conclusion; no matter what game we played the Home Theater HD 7.1 produced excellent crystal clear audio and in game effects.