During the Win9x era, there was the Aureal cards which apparently were quite good and has stunning 3D audio capabilities (just listen to this ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oSlbyLAksM)

The sound blaster live was liked too, and the PCI YMF 7x4 while being half a DOS card is also a great windows card. But yeah, all of this was from the win9x era. IMO what LGR said about sound cards is kinda true for the XP era : it's the same as nowadays : will you buy a sound card specifically for games or will you stay with the one integrated to your motherboard. To me if the sound is clean enough, for an XP computer, I wouldn't need a sound card. Also, since creative kicked almost everybody out from the sound card domain, there is no real competition anymore to me so this is also why we get uninteresting products that don't seem to bring enough goodies to be really interesting.

But I never tried any high end sound card from the XP era or even from now, so I might be completely wrong

In the early days of onboard sound, getting another sound card was often a good idea. I seem to recall that the onboard devices tended to consume system resources best used elsewhere, but these days RAM is plentiful, CPUs are fast, and despite the various grumblings, it is probably reasonable to say that newer versions of Windows are a lot more stable than Win9x ever was.

So, if you're going to be running Win9x, it's probably not a good idea to stick with onboard sound. One of the SB Live cards supported by the kX Project is probably a good idea, even if you end up using the official Creative drivers.
http://www.kxproject.com/faq.php?language=en#Q15

People keep saying good things about 3D sound, but it seems to me that it was associated primarily with bugs and crashes and is probably more trouble than it is worth.

Jorpho wrote:

In the early days of onboard sound, getting another sound card was often a good idea. I seem to recall that the onboard devices […]
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In the early days of onboard sound, getting another sound card was often a good idea. I seem to recall that the onboard devices tended to consume system resources best used elsewhere, but these days RAM is plentiful, CPUs are fast, and despite the various grumblings, it is probably reasonable to say that newer versions of Windows are a lot more stable than Win9x ever was.

So, if you're going to be running Win9x, it's probably not a good idea to stick with onboard sound. One of the SB Live cards supported by the kX Project is probably a good idea, even if you end up using the official Creative drivers.
http://www.kxproject.com/faq.php?language=en#Q15

People keep saying good things about 3D sound, but it seems to me that it was associated primarily with bugs and crashes and is probably more trouble than it is worth.

Bugs and crashes? With creative cards? 3d sound was the bomb back in the day. I ran Creative cards almost exclusively since I had a SB Pro 2.0. The drivers were sort of dodgy on earlier versions, but they are pretty good and stable since they got most of the bugs/issues worked out.

The 3d sound didn't make the games have any more problems than they did without for the most part.

I do have some Aureal based cards now but haven't actually built a system with one yet.

There's an entire hardware sub-forum for Sound here: Sound

Special proprietary API's haven't been a factor in modern Windows gaming for a while. The game industry moved away from EAX to hardware agnostic solutions towards the end of the XP era, and then later versions of Windows killed remaining support. It's all about analog signal quality in card comparisons now.

In the early XP years, Creative's Audigy series were the only serious gaming cards on the market. On Win9x until 2000-2001, their Live! series had competition from Aureal's A3D 2.0 enabled cards, which provided a superior 3D sound effect.

I'm a big fan of the Audigy 2 ZS
Fairly common, Last Creative card to support Win98 and supports EAX 4.0 which covers vast majority of games even into the XP era (mid 2000's)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_EAX_support

Jorpho wrote:

In the early days of onboard sound, getting another sound card was often a good idea. I seem to recall that the onboard devices tended to consume system resources best used elsewhere, but these days RAM is plentiful, CPUs are fast, and despite the various grumblings, it is probably reasonable to say that newer versions of Windows are a lot more stable than Win9x ever was.

The main reason why I believe a DOS based SB emulator is required. 9X/ME I'm having issues on modern chipsets not detecting the sound or video cards. 2K was quite stable but did have some USB issues, but I now recommend XP being the better more stable OS even capable of running on a Z270 chipset.

So, if you're going to be running Win9x, it's probably not a good idea to stick with onboard sound. One of the SB Live cards supported by the kX Project is probably a good idea, even if you end up using the official Creative drivers.
http://www.kxproject.com/faq.php?language=en#Q15

People keep saying good things about 3D sound, but it seems to me that it was associated primarily with bugs and crashes and is probably more trouble than it is worth.

I also agree I never jumped on the 3D Sound band wagon but EAX seems to be the popular gaming option for this found on Sound Blaster cards. I do agree that the SB Live is a good option since it's easier to find and automatically detected on XP for a cheap price. But on a modern chipset Z68 and Z77 I couldn't detect the Ensoniq PCI, SB Live, or Audigy ZS 2 in Windows 98 SE. Anyone here successfully detect these PCI sound cards in Windows 98SE on Z68 Sandy Bridge chipsets or newer?

chinny22 wrote:

I'm a big fan of the Audigy 2 ZS
Fairly common, Last Creative card to support Win98 and supports EAX 4.0 which covers vast majority of games even into the XP era (mid 2000's)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_EAX_support

I own a few of these one of them sealed.

Chinny22, testing this on a Z68 and Z77 and installing Windows 98SE fresh it was unable to even detect this card so there is no way to install such a driver.

What motherboard chipset did you successfully test Windows 98SE install using the Audigy 2 ZS sound card?

Was there any special way to detect this sound card if it's not detected through add new hardware option?

Newest PC I've ever installed Win98 on is a socket 478 system, usually something like a 865PE chipset.
I've had mixed results, mostly it just works like you would expect, bunch of unknown devices showing in device manager until I use the standard CD that is on vogons drivers.
Every once in a while windows wont find the card. Trying the card in another PCI slot sometimes picks it up, sometimes not.
Clean Windows install without the card then adding it after windows is installed sometimes works as well.

chinny22 wrote:

Newest PC I've ever installed Win98 on is a socket 478 system, usually something like a 865PE chipset. I've had mixed results, m […]
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Newest PC I've ever installed Win98 on is a socket 478 system, usually something like a 865PE chipset.
I've had mixed results, mostly it just works like you would expect, bunch of unknown devices showing in device manager until I use the standard CD that is on vogons drivers.
Every once in a while windows wont find the card. Trying the card in another PCI slot sometimes picks it up, sometimes not.
Clean Windows install without the card then adding it after windows is installed sometimes works as well.

Hmm only P4 865PE chipset? Okay that doesn't sound too good for Intel. I'm wondering how many Socket 775 Intel motherboards successfully worked with 98SE and detecting the video and sound cards with no issue.

I'm not worried about any unknown devices popping up. That would be a good thing at least it is detecting random devices.

I might try swapping the card in the PCI slots around or try installing with it and then try installing the card post clean install. Both whenever I tried detecting new hardware it would not see any of those cards from my previous tests.

Which standard CD did you use from vogons drivers and did you use that CD after it was showing up in the hardware devices or was it not showing up but after the CD driver installation program it miraculously pops up?

Can you link the exact CD driver for me to download and test that you used? I can't find mine at the moment and I don't want to open up the sealed box I have which I don't know where that one is stored either.

Yeh that was what I was trying to say, maybe didn't word it clearly, Basically
Unknown device= Install drivers and everything just works
Nothing in Device manager = swear, format, move stuff, try again.

Here is the link, I've used it on a card with the Fire ware breakout I/O box, internal 5.25 I/O panel and no panel at all, fair to say its the same CD for all the cards.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … 510&menustate=0

Also GeorgeMan has a Socket 775 with ZS running Win98, maybe hit him up if you still run into trouble?
Win 98, XP & 8.1 fully supported on one dual core PC? Here is my retro approach!

chinny22 wrote:

Yeh that was what I was trying to say, maybe didn't word it clearly, Basically Unknown device= Install drivers and everything j […]
Show full quote

Yeh that was what I was trying to say, maybe didn't word it clearly, Basically
Unknown device= Install drivers and everything just works
Nothing in Device manager = swear, format, move stuff, try again.

Here is the link, I've used it on a card with the Fire ware breakout I/O box, internal 5.25 I/O panel and no panel at all, fair to say its the same CD for all the cards.
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … 510&menustate=0

Also GeorgeMan has a Socket 775 with ZS running Win98, maybe hit him up if you still run into trouble?
Win 98, XP & 8.1 fully supported on one dual core PC? Here is my retro approach!

BTW I got the same breakout I/O BOX. Black front.
Your Game Avatar where is that from? For some reason I'm thinking a character from an Access Software game but I could be mistaken. And with the gun pointed at the guy's head not aware got me curious. 😈

I'll take a link at GeorgeMan's link. I do have a 775 Socket hybrid AGP/PCIe motherboard that I intended to do patching/hacking of the video drivers to get the latest possible graphics cards to work under 98SE that stopped getting support. Of course only the ones within 1 generation or possibly 2 from when official drivers stopped.

I was originally hoping to get the Z68/Z77 to run 98SE and using a Audigy ZS2 Plat for audio and video would first start with one that officially had 98 drivers that worked for PCIe and then move up a generation for hack testing. The main reason was I could make the entire build passive with no fans at all. But I'm sensing Socket 775 era might be the last generation chipset before Z68 that could still do 98SE with video and audio cards working properly.