Is a Diamond Sonic Impact S90 pci better than my AWE64 Value ISA?

[jediphoenix]

?

------------------
<A HREF="http://jediphoenix.iscool.net/
" TARGET=_blank>http://jediphoenix.iscool.net/
</A>

[Dyre]

I have never heard of the Diamond card, but from my experiances the AWE 64 is a damn good card. I wouldnt replace a 64 with anything but a LiVE! or a MX300

Ive been using a AWE32 Value untill recently, when i got a MX300 for $20...
The price was too good too pass up.

------------------
PIII 450 @ 504
generic BX motherboard
G400 MAX : )
GlobalWin VOS32!
Maxtor 13 gig UDMA 33
Maxtor 13 gig UDMA 66
Creative 36x CD-ROM
96 megs PC100 RAM
128 megs PC133 ECC RAM
NetGear 10/100
Soundblaster 32 AWE
Diamond SupraExpress 56k
Logitech Wireless Desktop (best $50 ive ever spent)
1 92mm Sunon Fan
4 80mm Sunon Fan's

[merchant2112]

the s90 is a ess chipset (mestro2 i think)

the awe64 is probibly slightly better but the s90 has support for 4 speakers i don't know about the awe64.

personaly haveing used the s90 in a system at work i would stay far away from it just bercuase its a diamond card (driver updates are next to non existant)get the live value or a vortex 2 card. nothing beats these cards. (im more patial to creative cards than aureal)

[Bohrn]

The PCI sound card will give you less of a slowdown when processing sound because the PCI bus is faster than the ISA. Also the Maestro2 (ESS) chipset has a reasonably powerful DSP onboard so it will take some load off your CPU. The AWE64 prolly has better quality sound however. And ISA cards usually have a more powerful amp built in. When I went from a SB16 to a Yamaha PCI card, the volume went down alot. This holds true with several other PCI/ISA cards as well. Speed-PCI card with powerful DSP that does 3D. Quality sound in MIDI or professional sound editing, go with the AWE 64. Hope it helps.

------------------
AsusP2B ,iCeleron525(7x75), 128megs PC100, G40032megSH, Diamond MX300, 2 small HD's, 42X Sony CDrom and 98SE w/shutdown patch, PD 5.5010, 1 grey cat, one black cat and one calico

[Bohrn]

The PCI sound card will give you less of a slowdown when processing sound because the PCI bus is faster than the ISA. Also the Maestro2 (ESS) chipset has a reasonably powerful DSP onboard so it will take some load off your CPU. The AWE64 prolly has better quality sound however. And ISA cards usually have a more powerful amp built in. When I went from a SB16 to a Yamaha PCI card, the volume went down alot. This holds true with several other PCI/ISA cards as well. Speed-PCI card with powerful DSP that does 3D. Quality sound in MIDI or professional sound editing, go with the AWE 64. Hope it helps.

------------------
AsusP2B ,iCeleron525(7x75), 128megs PC100, G40032megSH, Diamond MX300, 2 small HD's, 42X Sony CDrom and 98SE w/shutdown patch, PD 5.5010, 1 grey cat, one black cat and one calico

[Bohrn]

The PCI sound card will give you less of a slowdown when processing sound because the PCI bus is faster than the ISA. Also the Maestro2 (ESS) chipset has a reasonably powerful DSP onboard so it will take some load off your CPU. The AWE64 prolly has better quality sound however. And ISA cards usually have a more powerful amp built in. When I went from a SB16 to a Yamaha PCI card, the volume went down alot. This holds true with several other PCI/ISA cards as well. Speed-PCI card with powerful DSP that does 3D. Quality sound in MIDI or professional sound editing, go with the AWE 64. Hope it helps.

------------------
AsusP2B ,iCeleron525(7x75), 128megs PC100, G40032megSH, Diamond MX300, 2 small HD's, 42X Sony CDrom and 98SE w/shutdown patch, PD 5.5010, 1 grey cat, one black cat and one calico

[Bohrn]

The PCI sound card will give you less of a slowdown when processing sound because the PCI bus is faster than the ISA. Also the Maestro2 (ESS) chipset has a reasonably powerful DSP onboard so it will take some load off your CPU. The AWE64 prolly has better quality sound however. And ISA cards usually have a more powerful amp built in. When I went from a SB16 to a Yamaha PCI card, the volume went down alot. This holds true with several other PCI/ISA cards as well. Speed-PCI card with powerful DSP that does 3D. Quality sound in MIDI or professional sound editing, go with the AWE 64. Hope it helps.

------------------
AsusP2B ,iCeleron525(7x75), 128megs PC100, G40032megSH, Diamond MX300, 2 small HD's, 42X Sony CDrom and 98SE w/shutdown patch, PD 5.5010, 1 grey cat, one black cat and one calico

[Bohrn]

OOOPS!

[jediphoenix]

Ok how about a SB 128 pci, is it better than my trusty AWE64 value isa?

[Rags]

Why is that everytime some person makes multiple posts, they either edit one of them saying ooops, or add another saying ooops, when they can actually just DELETE the blasted things?????

[Hunsow]

Why do they make multiple posts in the first place? I never had a double post, clicking the submit button once is enough, even when you get an error. And I always copy the post into the clipboard before posting it, just in case.

[This message has been edited by Hunsow (edited 31 March 2000).]

[Schorsch]

I have a Diamond Sonic Impact S90 and I'm quite happy with it (I didn't buy it to replace a Soundblaster card, however).
First, I'd like to add some corrections about the card:

The S90 doesn't use an ESS chipset (that's the S70), it has the Aureal Vortex 1 (AU8820) chipset. True, Diamond's driver support is a disaster (they posted the last driver for this card in January 1999) but the Aureal reference drivers work just fine so it isn't actually a problem.
By the way, the S90 doesn't support four speakers, only two.

The German "c't" magazine had a soundcard test a while ago and the S90 had a better signal/noise-ratio and a better frequency range than the AWE64, but I remember reading somewhere that the hardware wavetable sounds better on the AWE 64.

All in all, the S90 is a decent card but as others have mentioned before, a SB Live Value or a Vortex 2 card isn't much more expensive and both have a lot more features than the S90. I'd go for one of these (if you *really* want to throw out your AWE64 - do you have any trouble with it?)

[merchant2112]

Ok I was thinking of the first sonic impact card. I did not realize that they made a second one with the same name. (Boy cant they think of something better than xxx 2 or xxx 3.

As for the sb128 I have one on a secondary game gig (and don't really see a need to upgrade It.) it even doses eax. (Just dose not have as many sound banks and other goodies.) And it doses have 4 channel speaker support.) But if money is a problem get one of the OEM sblive cards who needs all the software junk (limited demos and games we won't play.) then you will have the best card. (And I would get one while they are still cheap) if aureal is really going out of business I see creative upping the prices

[Himself]

Delete works fine here.

[Message has been Deleted.]

[Gurm]

Rags,

In many cases I have been utterly unable to delete a post, and thus forced to edit it. Hasn't happened in a while, so it might have been a forum glitch that Ant fixed. But I don't even try to delete posts anymore, I always get an error.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.