I have both of these and wanted to use one of them for dos gaming. Now the 128 is the oldest so figured to use that one but it is not detected in any game. Are these cards to new already? This is in pure dos 6.22. Not dos mode from a 9x install.
PCI sound cards are generally not detected in pure DOS. You need to load the TSR for the card to work in DOS.
As already stated - the card needs drivers to work.
I used various SB Live cards before getting some AWEs. I think they worked great but were too much in the 486 machines... there was stutter due to the PCI bus which did not occur even on the slowest Pentium platform.
I only used a SB128 based card a few times and it seemed to sound like tin... terrible.
Neither PCI card is really recommended for DOS, but given that, the SBLive has far better SNR, so whatever sound it makes will at least sound crystal clear. You will need nasty TSR drivers in any event.
Exactly what other options you may have depend on your system - what motherboard are you using?
The SB Live has better FM synthesis capabilities. This will matter in older DOS games that don't support General Midi.
Of course, the FM synthesis on the Live is not as good as on a card with a genuine OPL3 chip, but it's still leagues better than what the SB128 is doing. Without exaggerating in any way, the SB128 has the worst FM synth emulation that I've ever heard. Here, have a listen:
