clueless1 wrote:

I seem to remember the Old Unreal mod patch supports more sound options, including OpenAL.

I think I tried several patches of Unreal, a different one for any build I played Unreal on (at least 3 different systems, with different sound cards).
The first one I think I left Unreal as it was, the second one I used one of the most recent retail patches and at least one patch I used some 3rd party patch that had increased texture sizes, but I kinda messed that build up by doing so. After I had crammed that modified Unreal onto that rig, all games were broken except for Unreal, so I either played Unreal on that rig and kinda forgot about playing any other game on there 🤣

I also do remember one of the earlier official patches changed something about the sound in Unreal?

Cool, I can check out Unreal. It's just that the timedemo doesn't really play many sound effects.

But I'll try it out and see if there is much of a difference. It does stream music as well, so that could be interesting.

This is the one I'm talking about:
http://oldunreal.com/oldunrealpatches.html
I have this installed on my Win98 rig, but it's not hooked up at the moment. I remember having quite a few more options when configuring positional audio and it also supports D3D 8 and 9 (which the FX5200 in that rig supports). I think D3D9 actually performed best with the FX5200. Otherwise, it was a pretty invisible patch. They say it fixes bugs that still existed after the last official patch, but other than more sound and graphics support, I remember it looking and playing just like stock Unreal.

Surprised you didn't test an Ultrasound, with it supposed to be less taxing than a sound blaster.

awgamer wrote:

Surprised you didn't test an Ultrasound, with it supposed to be less taxing than a sound blaster.

Yea, try buying one these days 😐

Don't need to, already have one:) But a trick to finding at least a facsimile of the old GUS is to search for interwave + dell/gateway/compaq.

Tada: http://servergoods.com/home/24523-compaq-2401 … 2kb-memory.html

It's not the good old GF1 but it's as close as you're going to get without waiting for one to pop up on ebay for $100+. For the longest time I could find the interwaves this way for $10-15 but now things are really getting long in the tooth so they've moved up to 30-40.

Supposedly there's a utility to configure the interwave to appear as a gusmax.

edit: looks like they're gouging on shipping, $30. Another place to look is china.

Guys I've done another benchmark marathon and updated the first post with brand new charts!

Tested are now:

- GLQuake
- Quake II (Quality set to high for 22 KHz)
- Quake III (Quality set to high for 22 KHz + A3D option for Vortex)
- Incoming (Both options 3DSound and A3D)
- Descent 3 (Lots of options, Direct Sound, Direct Sound 3D, EAX and A3D) tested all of them
- Unreal (in 44 KHz, and then in 44 KHz with Use3DHardware option)

Don't worry about the GUS for Windows games. I would be very surprised if the Windows driver did any hardware mixing.

Lovin' the new charts, mate! Thank you for your work! When do we get to know what the mystery card is? 😀

Quite impressed with the Audician. Keeps up pretty well with the PCI boys, and only falls behind (barely) to the AWE64 on Unreal.

So basically it can be summed up as don't use socket 7 for these later games, CPU is too slow.

clueless1 wrote:

Lovin' the new charts, mate! Thank you for your work! When do we get to know what the mystery card is? 😀

I'll try to produce the video for this weekend 😀

I'm really impressed by the ISA cards. I can only guess that there are limitations, maybe they drop voices or something like that.

Wow, these are really useful! Thank you so much Phil!

While I'd still prefer to use my AWE32 instead of a Vortex 2, but the results show that the Vortex 2 can in some cases offload the CPU and improve overall performance somewhat.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I'm really impressed by the ISA cards. I can only guess that there are limitations, maybe they drop voices or something like that.

It wouldn't surprise me if as you bump up CPU speeds, they start to fall further behind their PCI cousins. Of course, lack of positional audio is kind of a limitation. 😉

The games being tested aren't saturating the devices hardware buffers. I just checked an Incoming only ever produces 8 sounds at once. Unreal limits by default to 16, and Descent3 varies in A3D due to the dynamics of WaveTracing, but typically hovers around 20 voices during the timedemo (on low quality defaults) 35 on high.
I think these charts clearly show the overall optimizations in each of the drivers CPU overhead, with the Live and Vortex 2's being the leaders, but it's really impressive seeing the ISA cards still hold up well. The Yamaha card and Sensaura seem to keep pace with A3D and EAX. Very optimized software there 😉

The good days when a nudge of FPS more made all the difference in the world.

Great review Phil! looking forward to the video, I think I know what the Mystery Card is. No spoilers 😁

Added Audigy results. But that's it, moving on to other things 😀

Very nice 😀
Looks like the Audigy stacks up really well and offers great performance. You mentioned it was a bit of a chore to install the VXD drivers though right?
Also did the Audigy support CMSS-3D in 98?

Will the Mystery Card be revealed?

ZanQuance wrote:

Very nice 😀
Looks like the Audigy stacks up really well and offers great performance. You mentioned it was a bit of a chore to install the VXD drivers though right?
Also did the Audigy support CMSS-3D in 98?

The Audigy was the easiest 🤣 Creative actually has a driver update, that also works stand-alone on their website. But it doesn't give you any of the applications and tools. Perfect for benching though. So no, I had no CMSS-3D option.

I gave up on getting the 2 ZS going 😒

clueless1 wrote:

Will the Mystery Card be revealed?

In the video some time next week. But you can start guessing 🤣

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

The Audigy was the easiest :lol: Creative actually has a driver update, that also works stand-alone on their website. But it do […]
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ZanQuance wrote:

Very nice 😀
Looks like the Audigy stacks up really well and offers great performance. You mentioned it was a bit of a chore to install the VXD drivers though right?
Also did the Audigy support CMSS-3D in 98?

The Audigy was the easiest 🤣 Creative actually has a driver update, that also works stand-alone on their website. But it doesn't give you any of the applications and tools. Perfect for benching though. So no, I had no CMSS-3D option.

I gave up on getting the 2 ZS going 😒

clueless1 wrote:

Will the Mystery Card be revealed?

In the video some time next week. But you can start guessing 🤣

One of those cheap USB DAC "sound cards" off ebay.

Nope 😀

Guys, I got the Audigy 2 ZS working. Got some instability with Descent 3, changing over to AmigaMerlin fixed that. So yea, I'm starting all over again. This time starting with the newest card because Creative CD updates your DirectX to version 9, so I'd like the version to be consistent.

Glad we got a holiday on Monday, I need the time that's for sure 😊