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Aurora Review and Benchmarks

post #1 of 20
9/1/04 at 7:00pm
Thread Starter 
OK, I've had my AW for a couple days now, and I love it. First thing I thought when it came was "it is BIG". This is definitely one of the biggest cases I've seen, but it looks great. The only thing that could have been better is the eyes on the front of the case, there is only 1 LED inside so it's not very bright. I didn't get any DVI adapters with it, so I had to use my plasma screen, which isn't too great for reading text. I got an adapter today, and it's working much better on my 17"CRT.
After I took it out of the box, I opened it up to check out the insides, and it looks nice and clean. I have the old chassis setup with AlienIce, so there are 2 blue LED fans in the front and 1 on the side, along with 2 on the back. All the wiring was good to go, and all the components were in place.
After I turned it on for the 1st time, it seemed kind of loud, but my Sager doesn't make hardly any noise at all. It doesn't seem so loud now that I've used it a couple of days. I ran 3DMark03 right after I turned it on, no OCing, all process running, no driver updates. I got a 12758. I shut off background tasks and unneeded processes and got a 12975. This was with the video drivers from AW, the 61.21. I updated the drivers to the new 61.77, ran 3DMark again and got 13075. I wonder what kind of score I can get after I OC this beast
As of now I have Doom3, BF:Vietnam, CS, CS:CZ, and CS:S on my system. Played Doom3 a little bit running at 1024x768 High details and it looked great. Next time I play I will put the settings to Ultra and see how that is. BF:V looks great running at 1024x768 all settings maxed. I haven't played CS yet, but if Doom3 and BF:V run like they did, I should have no problem running a game that uses a 5 year old engine. I have a few pics, but I am going to wait until I move on Friday to upload them, since I don't have a great setup right now. My AW is sitting on a chair in the living room, with my CRT on a TV tray and my plasma on the floor. I don't have my GigaWorks hooked up either, so after I move I will take more pics. That's all for now, time to game some more. After I move and get everything setup I'll post a more in depth review along with lots of pics.
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post #2 of 20
9/2/04 at 2:59am
Have you noticed any graphical problems with Doom3 or Battlefield Vietnam? We have almost exact same PCs. I'm running both games on 1152 x 864 resolution. Doom3 is High graphics with 4 x AA and BFV is 4 x AA and 16 x AF. Here's what I'm seeing...



Battlefield Vietnam is similar. With no AA and/or AF I don't get these problems. When those things appear on the screen, I just look elsewhere and they disappear. I haven't updated the Nvidia drivers, cause I figured they shipped with the latest ones. Any suggestions?
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post #3 of 20
9/2/04 at 9:27am
Update the drivers...

Strange that the dots are only on some textures. Have you checked the forums over at planetquake or Nvidia?
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post #4 of 20
9/2/04 at 1:49pm
I'll update the drivers and see what happens. No, I've just started looking for the answer to this. They're not on the screen all the time and if I move the mouse around they disappear. Still they shouldn't be there. I'll report back.

Well first I just updated the drivers and it stayed the same even when I moved the resolution to 1024 x 768. Then I uninstalled the old drivers, disk clean and defrag, installed the new drivers, and turned on vertical sync in game. I can still see some squares here and there (very rare), but they're not staying to take a pic like they did (much better). I'd investigate further, but I have to go back to work. Any suggestions?
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post #5 of 20
9/3/04 at 12:33am
Thread Starter 
Noticed my processor was running at 1.2GHz, so I turned off the cool 'n quiet so it's running at 2.4GHz. I ran 3DMark a few more times and all got right around 13100.
My internet is jacked up right now, but I played a little CS:S. It's running at 1024x768, all settings maxed, 6xAA. Did the stress test and came out with 157.8 fps, in game I was averaging 100 fps, it went down to ~85 around the double doors near CT spawn, in some places it was ~120 fps, even during combat. Haven't played BF:V multiplayer yet, but did single player and it was getting anywhere from 150-200 fps at 1024x768 all settings maxed.

Krazn - I haven't seen anything like that on mine. Have OCd anything? I used Powerstrip and default was 440 and 1200, I moved it up to 451 and 1210, but ran 3DMark and it froze then rebooted. I remember reading on here somewhere to use another program other than powerstrip to OC the 6800 Ultra. Does anyone remeber off hand what it was?
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post #6 of 20
9/3/04 at 12:38am
Coolbits.
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post #7 of 20
9/3/04 at 1:40am
No I haven't overclocked a thing. I'll have to search around and see if anyone else is having any problems. I haven't found anyone else so far.
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post #8 of 20
9/3/04 at 1:50am
what drivers are u using? the 61.77? I'm using the 65.73 and I dont have any hiccups at all, except from my LCD refresh rate can't keep up w/ the doom3 sometime =P...keep us posted and let us know if u have any further video problems?
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post #9 of 20
9/3/04 at 3:00am
I downloaded the 61.77 drivers, because the Nvidia site said they were the latest drivers. What are the 65.73 drivers? My problem appears fixed for the most part when I turned on vert sync. I didn't play Doom3 too much tonight after turning it on, but I only saw a few black squares and they disappear quick. You'd have to be looking for them to see them. I tried Battlefield Vietnam with 1600 x 1200, 4 x aa, 16 x aa, and vert sync and it was much better too. There was still some red in the map and a few squares on a boat, but it was much better. There was some lag when the flame thrower was used, but I think everyting gets much better when I turn the resolution down in this game. After awhile of play at 1600 x 1200 I was getting slow down and some lock ups, but I didn't play long enough to see if that was still the case with the vert sync and the 61.77 drivers (no slow down and lock up when I used 1152 x 864). I'll experiment more another night, but it's much better.
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post #10 of 20
9/3/04 at 3:17am
sounds good, glad u got everything resolved...btw have u had any problems gettin on any servers for multi player?...most of the servers I try to get on say it's full when they are not and require a pw...are there some new patches out? just curious if you've tried multi player yet...
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post #11 of 20
9/3/04 at 1:52pm
No I haven't tried the Doom3 multiplayer. It looked like it was pretty much deathmatches and I prefer the team gameplay of games like Battlefield Vietnam. Maybe I'll give it a try when I'm done with the single player, but it'll probably be a one play only then back to BFV kind of thing. Thanks for the replys. Sorry to take over your thread YankeeDeuce.
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post #12 of 20
9/4/04 at 7:25am
Quote:
Originally Posted by YankeeDeuce
OK, I've had my AW for a couple days now, and I love it. First thing I thought when it came was "it is BIG". This is definitely one of the biggest cases I've seen, but it looks great. The only thing that could have been better is the eyes on the front of the case, there is only 1 LED inside so it's not very bright. I didn't get any DVI adapters with it, so I had to use my plasma screen, which isn't too great for reading text. I got an adapter today, and it's working much better on my 17"CRT.
After I took it out of the box, I opened it up to check out the insides, and it looks nice and clean. I have the old chassis setup with AlienIce, so there are 2 blue LED fans in the front and 1 on the side, along with 2 on the back. All the wiring was good to go, and all the components were in place.
After I turned it on for the 1st time, it seemed kind of loud, but my Sager doesn't make hardly any noise at all. It doesn't seem so loud now that I've used it a couple of days. I ran 3DMark03 right after I turned it on, no OCing, all process running, no driver updates. I got a 12758. I shut off background tasks and unneeded processes and got a 12975. This was with the video drivers from AW, the 61.21. I updated the drivers to the new 61.77, ran 3DMark again and got 13075. I wonder what kind of score I can get after I OC this beast
As of now I have Doom3, BF:Vietnam, CS, CS:CZ, and CS:S on my system. Played Doom3 a little bit running at 1024x768 High details and it looked great. Next time I play I will put the settings to Ultra and see how that is. BF:V looks great running at 1024x768 all settings maxed. I haven't played CS yet, but if Doom3 and BF:V run like they did, I should have no problem running a game that uses a 5 year old engine. I have a few pics, but I am going to wait until I move on Friday to upload them, since I don't have a great setup right now. My AW is sitting on a chair in the living room, with my CRT on a TV tray and my plasma on the floor. I don't have my GigaWorks hooked up either, so after I move I will take more pics. That's all for now, time to game some more. After I move and get everything setup I'll post a more in depth review along with lots of pics.
I wonder why my scores are lower? This is mine 12670. I updated my drivers to 61.77 and Direct 9.0c. I also turned off all running programs. Any reason why it's low?
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post #13 of 20
9/6/04 at 7:37pm
Thread Starter 
Well, I'm all moved into my dorm room and my Aurora is still doing great. The GigaWorks speakers are sound great for everything. I'm still getting between 13000 and 13100 3DMarks, and all the games I've played run perfectly on the highest settings. I tried OC with Coolbits, but it still crashed during 3DMark, even when I underclocked it. Everything runs fine, so I'm not going to OC it anymore.

JHEGO - Not sure why your score is 400 lower than mine. I have pretty much the same specs as you do.
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post #14 of 20
9/6/04 at 7:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by YankeeDeuce
Well, I'm all moved into my dorm room and my Aurora is still doing great. The GigaWorks speakers are sound great for everything. I'm still getting between 13000 and 13100 3DMarks, and all the games I've played run perfectly on the highest settings. I tried OC with Coolbits, but it still crashed during 3DMark, even when I underclocked it. Everything runs fine, so I'm not going to OC it anymore.

JHEGO - Not sure why your score is 400 lower than mine. I have pretty much the same specs as you do.

AW prolly tweaked your comp a lil better than mine.
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post #15 of 20
9/7/04 at 7:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by YankeeDeuce
Well, I'm all moved into my dorm room and my Aurora is still doing great. The GigaWorks speakers are sound great for everything. I'm still getting between 13000 and 13100 3DMarks, and all the games I've played run perfectly on the highest settings. I tried OC with Coolbits, but it still crashed during 3DMark, even when I underclocked it. Everything runs fine, so I'm not going to OC it anymore.

JHEGO - Not sure why your score is 400 lower than mine. I have pretty much the same specs as you do.


Do most applications allow 7.1 sound? I've found that some programs I use won't even use all the speakers even when they are all set to play.
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post #16 of 20
9/9/04 at 8:41pm
Thread Starter 
Most of mine do, if not I have to upmix from 5.1 or 7.1, but for most things the 7.1 works great.

Also, I just bought the AverMedia UltraTV PCI 500 TV Tuner card and installed it. It works great, you can record video in MPEG2, AVI or DVD format, or you can do audio in WAV, MP3 or WMA. Hopefully the scheduler works tonight for the game since I'll be playing basketball when it starts. It let's you pause and replay what your watching too. One of the cool features let's you put the video on your desktop, so if you are chatting you can watch TV in the background. If anyone wants a TV Tuner for their PC I recommend this one.
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post #17 of 20
10/15/04 at 2:06pm
Hi - I'm thinking of buying the new Aurora with the FX-53 and X800 XT Platinum Edition. Does any one know, if I turn XP into STAND-BY mode, do all the fans turn off so the PC is silent? Also, when the machine is running is it quiet (ish)? I'm looking at running it in my lounge for games etc and would like to leave it in stand-by for fast start up - but only if it all turns off (like my Dell does). Does anyone know, as Alientware support were not very sure (which was odd when I called them!). Thanks - Nick
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post #18 of 20
10/15/04 at 4:31pm
from what ive read, the aurora is pretty damn loud. that sucks for me because its going to be on my desktop, less than a couple feet away from my head. the aw site says the a51 desktops use quiet fans. im presuming that 1 quiet fan = quiet, while 4+ quiet fans = friggin loud.

im pretty sure it will turn off the fans during standby, though.
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post #19 of 20
10/16/04 at 6:45am
Thanks - I'll do a post seeing if there are any current Aurora owners that can tell us about noise and standby!
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post #20 of 20
11/10/04 at 10:22pm
Yea, if you set it to surround most games will use the front 3 and the two rear.
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