Is a Diamond Monster MX300 soundcard good ?

[FruitLooPs]

Hey people, just wondering if the mentioned card (Diamond Monster MX300 (vortex2 based) soundcard is anygood ?

Obviously its old, but i was given it for free and it definatly beats my waay old SB16, and i like the gold plated sockets. Ive read reviews on it being a competitior for the SB Live, but that was in 98-99 not 02 so i don't know if SB Lives are diff now.

Its all good cept for it killing cs on me :( http://forums.overclockers.co.nz/showthread.php?s=&threadid=833

[Ragnor]

First, did you find a solution to the CS problem..?

Anyway the card is alright... definately better then a sb16 and anything creative pre sblive.. In fact it's based on the Aureal Vortex2 chip so its probably better then the sb live...

However.. creative put aureal out of business (/me avoids rant about damn creative bastards). It no longer has official support from aureal... and hey diamond nearly went out of business, got bought by s3, who got bought by someone else... and no longer really support there older products at all...

So in terms of getting *official* drivers & updates you're probably **** out of luck...

Thankfully there are communities of people out there they are doing tht good work of creating drivers etc..

Go here:
www.vortexofsound.com

Welcome to "Vortex of Sound", the definitive website dedicated to the Aureal Vortex sound cards and the people who use them. This website is the best place to come for the latest Aureal Vortex and A3D news, A3D game releases, new game patches, technical help, updated drivers, and more.

[RockBoy]

waits for mav to deal with this one ;)

[Kazyua]

the mx300 was a good sound card for its day and still is :D

[FruitLooPs]

schweet as.

But no ragnor - still dont work with cs :(

[mird-OC]

the MX300 uses the Vortex2 chipset and


the Vortex2 is the best consumer level sound chip ever made


but creative labs killed it. it was just too good.... so they snatched it away, ripped out it's soul, destroyed it's support lines, and left it for dead.

so as long as you don't mind it's driver quirks (that will probably never be sorted out - blame creative), that card should serve you very well.