ASRock Vision 3D 252B HTPC Review

Name: ASRock Vision 3D 252B HTPC
Brand: ASRock

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, August 01, 2012, 10:50 AM EDT

For our next set of tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with Left 4 Dead 2 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. When testing low-power platforms with L4D2 or ET:QW, we dialed the image quality settings down to medium quality settings and tested at various resolutions. Since these are more entry-level game tests on highly mobile platforms or platforms equipped with mobile parts, we left anti-aliasing turned off and image quality settings set from moderate to high levels where possible.

3D Gaming: ET: Quake Wars and Left 4 Dead 2

Testing Zacate's GPU

We've got a couple of different things going on in these game tests. Fist, keep in mind the GeForce GT 540M in the Vision 3D 252B and the GT 425M in the older Vision 3D PC we looked at are both 96 CUDA core GPUs. The GeForce GT 540M and 425M only differ in their clock speeds, with the 540M being the faster of the two (1120MHz vs. 1344MHz.) We also think the newer drivers and higher-clocked system memory on the newer 252B HTPC help it out here, particularly in the ET:QW test. Regardless of the deltas, the Vision 3D 252B is the fastest of the bunch.

Although not listed in the graphs, we'd also like to mention that we did some in-game testing at full 1080P resolution as well. In L4D2 the system put up 44.16 FPS at 1080P and in ET:QW it put up 61 FPS.

Tags: Nvidia, Intel, Blu-ray, HTPC, 3D, ASRock

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com