Nopileus wrote:Looks like some chinese factory got their hands on surplus Vortex 2 chips and rolled their own card, the dates on the files on that CD seem to support that theory as Aureal was long gone by 2003.
It has the revision B0 chip which is interesting, those don't come up too often but nobody really seems to know if there's differences.
The codec appears to be different too, but it's an AC97 compliant one regardless.
Yeah, I thought the same thing immediately. Those are definitely not SQ2500s, or anything made by Aureal, Turtle Beach or Diamond.
Even if they're knock offs, they are probably somewhat rare (and worth collecting) because they would have been problematic in the post-XP era (in which they were made apparently), so they were likely not popular. You also wouldn't find them in OEM systems I'd bet.
I've certainly never seen one before and I own several Vortex cards, including a real SQ2500 with the B0 revision chip.
If you're a sound card geek\collector\hoarder (like I'm turning out to be)... you should hang on to those. If they're really from 2003, they could be the last card produced with an Aureal chip. 😀
Kind of like the few odd-ball arcade oriented 3dfx cards out there that were made a couple years after the company closed.
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.