According to Creative, with the ZS, a new version of 3D sound has arrived. This is the advent of EAX 4.0 Advanced HD, which claims to bring a new dimension to the games that use it. Of course, it is based on the previous version, but EAX 4.0 brings greater realism to the sound atmosphere and a substantial improvement to multi-environments in real time. The player can find his or her way around more easily and handle the events in the game. He or she can hear battles taking place in a neighboring room while fighting in a new environment. Furthermore, this new version is capable of finding hardware resources on the card for start-up effects, originally a feature designed for musicians. The gamer can use them to improve the rendering of the sound environment. Of course, you'll have to wait for games able to use EAX 4.0 to find out if all this is as effective as Creative promises it to be.

For our processor occupation tests, we are now using Right Mark's new 3D Sound software to replace Winbench, which now looks a little outdated... The tests show very low processor occupation because with EAX activated, you can go as low as 2%!