It'll be real in so far as having a real Vortex 2 chip but i doubt it was manufactured by Aureal. It doesn't seem to be missing any essential components and the codec used is a standard AC97 one, other than the missing wavetable header i don't see this being a bad card at all.

My comment about them being made from surplus parts after Aureal was gone was by no means a negative thing, it's just interesting seeing something unusual.
For the price i'd be picking one up too, shipping ruins that deal for me however.

Really you think its using a standard ac97 chip? the 3d effects on this card sounds really good tho, even midi sounds great.

I wounder if the drivers and the Vortex demo's are modified to work on this card.

AC97 was a standard for audio codecs set by intel in... 1997. They all adhere to a certain feature set and there's loads of em.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC%2797#Codec_chips
I'm having a hard time remembering which one the other cards use but i believe they're all the same (sigmatel maybe?), this one is different. (TriTech 28028)

The 3D audio and everything digital is handled in the Vortex2 regardless, the codec only handles converting that digital audio to analog signals for you to hear.

Did you listen to the A3D demos over headphones? Not sure if you have another Vortex 2 card to compare, but the effect should be noticeable right away.

Yea i have a real vortex 2 to compare with and they both sound identical and yea I did the A3D demos.

That's all that matters then! Nice buy 😀

It's not a "Vortex", it's a... VO))))|RTEX2 SQ2500 Gold (no, that doesn't mean it has to have actual gold plating somewhere!)

🤣 I like how they avoided calling it "Vortex" straight up.

Anyway, if it were available in aliexpress / from China direct, shipping int'l wouldn't be so expensive (just dead slow).

archsan wrote:

Anyway, if it were available in aliexpress / from China direct, shipping int'l wouldn't be so expensive (just dead slow).

Exactly, just as I got excited with this post, I noticed that postage is more than double its price 😒

The picture of the box says SPDIF but I don't see it on the card. Or do you need the diamond MX25 daughter board?

One of the headers on the card is labeled SPDIF, the other is cd audio-in.

i gave him a best offer of $8 for it, so it wasn't so bad. I told him the card was fake and he wanted to argue with me on it (typical eBay seller), but whatever the way i see it its got 9x support as well as xp drivers whitch i haven't tried the xp drivers yet i sounds really good, the only down fall is i have to turn the volume all the way up on the pc and my speaker system to half volume and its pretty loud from there.

More to add to my collection

It reminds me a few good old sayings " You get what you pay for" or "if it's too good to be true, then it probably is". On a serious note, these are just probably cheap Vortex2 sound cards. I personally avoid buying no-name brands.