P
C geeks like dials and gauges and greater hands-on involve-
ment, so Nvidia’s Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA)
should come as a welcome gift to us all. In a nutshell, ESA is
an open standard for adding communication capabilities to normally
“dumb” components. Using USB as the basic protocol, ESA adds
intelligence to devices such as water coolers, power supplies, and
cases, so you’ll have more insight into how your PC is running and
be able to effect changes.
I fi nally kicked the tires on ESA’s basic functionality with this
month’s Hypersonic Sonic Boom OCX (reviewed on page 68). The
PC came with an ESA-enabled PC Power and Cooling 1,200 watt
PSU and CoolIT Systems Freezone Elite. At this stage, the software,
drivers, and hardware are pretty rudimentary, but I like what I saw.
Of course, your own appreciation of ESA depends on how geeky
you are, but I like knowing that my PSU is eating about 34 amps on
the 12-volt rail at idle. And just how hot is it inside my power supply?
Well, it’s 31 C, and the fan is spinning at 100 percent. Likewise, just
what is the temperature of the coolant? You’ll know if you have an
ESA-enabled water-cooling system. Sure, some water-cooling rigs
already give you basic readouts and manual control over fl ow, but
ESA will eventually let you control functionality from the OS or moni-
tor a device remotely across the Internet.
Ultimately, if ESA takes hold, we could use it to troubleshootproblems—we’d know if the power supply is overloaded or if the cool-
ant is low. Cases with ESA will let you toggle lights and control fans
from within the OS, functionality which has been limited to large OEMs
until now, and I’m sure some crafty geek will fi gure out a way to let you
remotely control a USB device via ESA, so your Peltier cup-cooler has
your beer nice and cold by the time you get home from the cubicle.
ESA actually stands a better chance of widespread adoption
than Nvidia’s EPP profi les for RAM. While EPP couldn’t make it
past the August JEDEC memory council, ESA will be submitted to
the USB-IF—the folks who approve USB standards. Nvidia is even
willing to forgo branding the spec with its name to ensure its com-
petitors feel more comfortable adopting it.
Overall, ESA is cool and will give power users yet another reason
to upgrade.More knobs and gauges are a good thing
in the lab REAL-WORLD TESTING: RESULTS. ANALYSIS. RECOMMENDATIONS
ESA will finally let you know the actual load on your PSU!GORDON MAH UNG
Thinks ESA Is
Long Overdue
I
n my review of the Hypersonic Sonic Boom OCX on page
68, I focused on the PC’s performance and stability—crucial
qualities in any gaming rig. But I’d be doing this machine a dis-
service if I didn’t talk a bit about its fl ight-simulator setup.
Hypersonic shipped the Sonic Boom with three 19-
inch monitors controlled by a Matrox TripleHead2Go Digital
Edition—enabling a resolution of 3840x1024 across a single
desktop—as well as Saitek’s Pro Flight yoke and rudder ped-
als. The good news: Flight Simulator X looks fantastic with thispanoramic view. But is it worth it? Are three relatively small
monitors better than one huge one? For comparison, I also
tested the Hypersonic with one 30-inch Gateway XHD3000 at
2560x1600.
The verdict? Although I and others here thought we’d prefer
a large single-panel display, when it came to the fl ight sim, I
actually preferred the smaller panels’ wraparound effect, which
felt more lifelike. Once I returned to the desktop for real work,
however, the happy feelings vanished. The triple monitors are
especially irksome when you have to go into the BIOS. Instead
of being confi ned to one panel, the BIOS screen is stretched
across all three, which makes changing settings rather diffi cult.
It was hard to tell if I was adjusting the CPU core voltage or
RAM voltage with the TripleHead2Go enabled.
Given the choice, I’d go for the triple-panel display for racing,
fl ying, or any other immersive sim—maybe even an MMO. But
for most other purposes, I’ll take a single large panel any day.Nathan Edwards
Flies the Friendly Skies
And pits Hypersonic’s triple display against the
reigning single-panel champ60 MAXIMUMPC (^) | FEB 08 (^) | http://www.maximumpc.com