ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime & NVIDIA Tegra 3 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 1, 2011 1:00 AM ESTHDMI Output, Controller Compatibility & Gaming Experience
NVIDIA sent along a Logitech Wireless Gamepad F710 with the Eee Pad Transformer Prime to test game controller compatibility. NVIDIA claims the Nintinendo Wiimote, wireless PS3, wired Xbox 360 and various other game controllers will work with Tegra 3 based devices courtesy of NVIDIA's own driver/compatibility work. The Logitech controller worked perfectly, all I had to do was put batteries in the device and plug the USB receiver into the Prime's dock; no other setup was necessary. Note that this same controller actually worked with the original Transformer as well, although there seemed to be some driver/configuration issues that caused unintended inputs there.
By default the Logitech controller navigates the Honeycomb UI just fine. You can use the d-pad to move between icons or home screens, and the start button brings up the apps launcher. The X button acts as a tap/click on an icon (yes, NVIDIA managed to pick a button that's not what Sony or Microsoft use as the accept button - I guess it avoids confusion or adds more confusion depending on who you ask).
Game compatibility with a third party controller is varied. NVIDIA preloaded a ton of Tegra Zone games on the Prime for me to get a good experience of what the platform has to offer. Shadowgun worked just like you'd expect it to, with the two thumbsticks independently controlling movement and aiming. Unfortunately the triggers aren't used in Shadowgun, instead you rely on the A button to fire and the B button to reload. Other games would use the d-pad instead of the thumbsticks for movement or use triggers instead of buttons for main actions. It's not all that different from the console experience, but there did seem to be more variation between control configurations than you'd get compared to what you find on the Xbox 360 or PS3.
The actual gaming experience ranges from meh to pretty fun depending on the title as you might expect. I'd say I had the most fun with Sprinkle and Riptide, with Bladeslinger looking the best (aside from NVIDIA's own Glowball demo).
Sprinkle is a puzzle game that we've written about in the past. You basically roll around with a fire truck putting out fires before they spread and catch huts on fire. It's like a more chill Angry Birds if you're not sick of that comparison. Sprinkle doesn't make use of external controllers, it's touch only.
Riptide is a jetski racing game that does have controller support. There's not a whole lot of depth to the game but it is reminiscent of simple racing games from several years ago. The Tegra version gets an image quality upgrade and overall the game doesn't look too shabby. I probably wasted a little too much time playing this one during the review process. It runs and plays very smoothly on Tegra 3.
Bladeslinger is the best looking title NVIDIA preloaded on the Prime - it's basically a Western themed Infinity Blade knockoff. Image quality and performance are both good, although the tech demo wasn't deep enough to really evaluate the game itself.
For games that support an external controller, the Logitech pad usually just worked. The only exception was Riptide where I had to go in and enable controller support in the settings menu first before I could use the Logitech in game. I don't believe that better third party controller support alone is going to make Android (or the Prime) a true gaming platform, but it's clear this is an avenue that needs continued innovation. NVIDIA wants to turn these tablets and smartphones into a gaming platform, and letting you hook up a wide variety of controllers up to them is a good idea in my book.
HDMI output was easy to enable; I just plugged the Prime into my TV and I got a clone of my display. I didn't have to fiddle with any settings or do anything other than attach a cable. The holy grail? Being able to do this wirelessly. The controller is there, it's time to make it happen with video output as well.
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thunng8 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
It would be pretty hard to beat the visuals of Infinity Blade II on the ipad2. The game looks amazing.TrackSmart - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Anand,Just a heads-up, as I know you had to get this review out the door quickly: It would be really useful to put the weight of the tablet AND keyboard dock prominently on the first page (maybe in the chart?). This would make it easier to compare the total travel weight to ultraportables and netbooks.
I'm guessing that we're talking about 2.6 pounds from what I could find online. And you'd end up with some serious battery life (18 hours?) compared to even the longest running Zacate (or Atom) laptops/netbooks. If only the software and hardware capabilities were as good...
biassj - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Asus looking good but tablets can't replace x86 PCs yet. I hope Asus launches a 15" Zenbook with 1080 display and maybe even a quad core Ivy bridge. I don't mind if it's thicker but I want something to compete with the rumor Macbook Air 15".HighTech4US - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Will the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime be retested here when ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) is released for it?My understanding is that there are improved graphics drivers and other improvements in the OS that will improve on the results shown here.
vvk - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Hi Anand,It seems that the results of the Ipad 2 and Transformer Prime are quite different in GLBenchmark 2.0.3 Egypt (tested by PCworld) vs. what you have found based on the vs. 2.1 of the same benchmark. Could you comment what may be the reason for the differences?
"The most significant result in our gaming performance tests: The Transformer Prime logged 53 frames per second, the highest frame rate we've seen on the GLBenchmark 2.0.3 Egypt test with no antialiasing. This result topped the Apple iPad 2's previous record of 46 fps, and it just crushed the Android masses we've tested, which averaged 18 fps and topped out at 34 fps (for the 7-inch Acer Iconia Tab A100)."
https://www.pcworld.com/article/245256/asus_eee_pa...
vvk - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Also wanted to add that other sites show much longer battery life for the Transformer. I understand that the battery life depends on use but could be that your unit is a dud in not only in case of WiFi but also battery, so I wonder if you would be willing to repeat the battery test?Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
I'm already on it :) Got a new Prime in this morning and battery life is looking much better already.Take care,
Anand
metafor - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
The tests in the article were done using an off-screen resolution of 1280x720. This allows all devices to be tested at the same resolution -- thus measuring the relative rendering performance of the SoC.Looking at the results on GLBenchmark's own website:
http://www.glbenchmark.com/result.jsp
Correlate to what is posted in the article.
The ones posted by users of Tegra-3 devices:
http://www.glbenchmark.com/phonedetails.jsp?benchm...
Also correlate with the results of the article. I suspect that version 2.0.3 may stress different parts of the GPU or that PC World got some pretty bad results.
vvk - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Well I usually do not play games off-screen :) Anyway, I am still puzzled what is causing the huge difference between the 2.0.3 Egypt vs. 2.1 (assuming both test were done correctly).Also while comparing Ipad 2 at theoretical 720p has merits in synthetic testing in practice you can not see more than 1024 by 768 pixels on the Ipad 2.
I am also wondering if GLBenchmark better than lets say 3dMark for desktop? 3D Mark scores do not always correlate perfectly with real games experience due to optimizations for particular card and also because synthetic testing is not a perfect substitute for real games to start with. So I am not overly concerned about the scores more about what have changed between the GLBenchmark versions.
metafor - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Absolutely. But unfortunately few games for mobile if any offer time-tests and there is no equivalent framerate tool like FRAPs to measure framerate in real games.So synthetic benchmarks will have to do for now.
As for 2.0.3 vs 2.1, GLBenchmark's website doesn't give all too much info except that it includes the off-screen mode as well as "high quality" versions.
But it does mention that 2.1's throughput tests -- which I don't think impact Egypt -- perform warm-up loops in order to cache a lot of its data before measuring GPU throughput.
Other than that, I'm not really sure what changed.