A3D driver questions....

[Jake]

Hi!

I just bought me a Diamond MX300 PCI A3D soundcard, and I have a few questions that needs answering...

The drivers that came with my board were version 1.02 and based on the Aureal 2017 driver core. I checked Diamond's web-site for an update as they were dated Feb/99 (pretty old). Same old stuff there.

So I checked Aureal's site for reference drivers and found version 2040. (quite a leap in version numbers here). I DL'ed and installed them and they seem to be running just fine. Now my soundcard is called the Vortex AU8830 in Windows system properties. And I have a neat utillity running in the tray for configuration.

The question is this: Should I continue to run with the reference drivers or go back to the old drivers from diamond?
I don't have any use for the SoftDVD as I have no DVD drive yet, nor do I have the SPDIF upgrade for the MX300.

Would it not seem logical to use the newest driver core release from Aureal?

If you know of any problems asociated with this or just have a comment on my setup, please let me know.

Thanks in advance,

Jake

P.S. Bought this puppy to get cool sound in the soon to be released game of the millenium: Diablo II!!! Yeah baby!!! And I read somewhere that the A3D chip does better 3D echoes and uses less processor power than the SB Live chip. Also it should run better with a Matrox G400/Abit mobo setup than the problem stricken SB Live.

Any comments?


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Who is General Failiure and why is he reading my drive?
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MGA-G200 8Mb Mill. bios ver. 2.3, Abit BH6 mobo bios ver. LN, PIII-450@558, 128Mb PC-133 SDRAM, 17" Hitachi monitor, Plextor 40TS CDROM, Panasonic 7502 CDR. Diamond MX300 A3D PCI soundcard.

[motub]

Absolutely stick with the Aureal drivers. They're newer, seem much more lean and stable, and I think the utilities work better as well... I suspect the Diamond utility of being a resource hog, whereas the Aureal seems not to be (would test it if I knew how).

Do be sure though, to actually uninstall the Diamond driver and utilities.. uninstall can be found in your Start Menu Programs folder (or Add/Remove Programs).. I was still having a problem or 2 (that cute little Aureal tray icon was gone, replaced by the Monster utilities again, for instance) despite having installed the Aureal drivers, till I actually removed the Monster Sound stuff... Windows will ask you to reinstall everything, but just make sure you've unzipped the Aureal exe to a temp folder and tell Windows where it is when it asks, it will be fine.

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Holly

What? System specs? Oh, yes, right...well, at the moment, it's: Soyo 5EMA, K6-2 333, 256MB PC100 SDRAM, Maxtor 7GB HDD, LS-120, Promise Ultra33 EIDE controller, Diamond Monster Sound MX300, HP 8100i CD-RW, Hi-Val (Nakamichi) 16X 5-disk CD changer, Win98 +SR1...oh yeah, and a Millennium G200 8MB SGRAM.



[This message has been edited by motub (edited 19 October 1999).]

[Jake]

Thanks Holly!

Mucho-preciated! I've been testing with a few new games, and this board blows huge salty chucks! Wouldn't you agree? I also ran a wavetracing demo I found on http://www.vortexofsound.com . After a change of underwear I tried the new Panzer General 3D and Q3Test 1.08

All I can say is: WHOOHAAA!!

My ancient SB16 Value has run it's last mile. This old steamer, has been in my PC since I bought a 386 back in´'93 (I think). Now it will live a peaceful live in retirement at a home for old ISA cards. Surrounded by old friends like my ISA parallel port and a bus mouse card from logitech. But it served me well. Up until it's retirement it was running a whopping 2.25 Mhz above ISA spec.! Not too shabby for an old dog.

Well, enough rambling. I'm getting all melancoly... (wiping a single tear and blowing nose hard in sleeve)

Have a great day,

Jake



------------------
Who is General Failiure and why is he reading my drive?
----------------------
MGA-G200 8Mb Mill. bios ver. 2.3, Abit BH6 mobo bios ver. LN, PIII-450@558, 128Mb PC-133 SDRAM, 17" Hitachi monitor, Plextor 40TS CDROM, Panasonic 7502 CDR. Diamond MX300 A3D PCI soundcard.

[Johnny Ray]

Hey Jake,

Glad you like the card. I thought the AU8830 was Aureal's "proprietary" Vortex2 chip which is in their SQ2500 that they just started selling. By propriety, as I understand it, they're not releasing this chip to Diamond, Turtle Beach, etc., but only going to sell it in their own cards. Supposedly much less CPU overhead with the new chip. But maybe the drivers are the same for all current Vortex2 cards, so if they work, great!

You want trouser-filling sound? I just got my Aureal SQ2500 quad sound card with the Klipsch Promedia's.......start saving up, this set up is unbelieveable!

John

[Mark F]

Has anyone tried the Aureal drivers useing a MX300 with the MX25 upgrade (spdif)?

What about a QUADZILLA? Just a posibility to retire my MX200, The above combo I have.

Mark F.

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OH NO, my retractable cup holder swallowed a CD



[This message has been edited by Mark F (edited 25 October 1999).]

[dave m]

Tentative question...might need a separate post.
Does anyone know whether going to these newer Aurial A3D drivers enables subwoofer support for Cambridge Soundworks four point surround? I bought the speaker system to get 4 way A3D then found the Diamond can't do four speaker with the sub woofer. Diamond know the problem and will address it in a future driver release, but the as the last one, as noted previously, was February (and people complain when Matrox only issue one every month?) I wonder what's going on there.

PS, If you're watching, Ant you do a great job, hope the flu's gone, I think you were well justified with that post you made :-)

Dave