The OPTi 82C930 in the second pic also has on-board MIDI synth (AdMOS QS700) which gives it a slight edge. It's a good card overall, with bugfree MPU-401 and a proper low-pass filter. The SBPro compatibility can be a bit flaky in certain games, but there are fixes for some of them. On the other hand, its WSS mode is excellent and highly compatible, even with picky games like Tyrian.

If you're interested, I've analyzed that card quite a bit in this thread: OPTi 82C930 review

I like the Opti 930 based cards so much that I bought every single model I could find that has onboard wavetable.

It was my very first sound card with onboard wavetable when I was growing up.

I went from an Adlib clone to that and used it until I had a computer that didn't have an ISA slot.

From 386 all the way up to Socket A if I remember correctly.

If you're after accurate OPL3 sound then the BTC 1815 card isn't the best choice, it's got the Opti 82c925 which is the first one to integrate Opti's OPL-clone. I have an Opti 931 (same Opti-FM) and kinda like how that FM sound sounds in some later DOS games, but it's bad for earlier ones like Lemmings.

The Opti 82C930 card has a separate OPL3 and that one's got a genuine Yamaha chip, along with the onboard wavetable, the FGS 1.0 is the best of the two.

Thank you everyone, I think I should pay a little more and get the 930.

Yep, another vote for the 930. The 925 isn't terrible, but real OPL3 and onboard wavetable (even if crappy low-end) gives the card with the 930 the edge.

Note that you don't need to mess around with old driver packages, the OPTi 930 is a PnP chip and is supported by Unisound.

All you need to do is use SET BLASTER to choose your resources (I'd normally go for A220 I5 D1 T4 P330) and run Unisound.

The onboard Wavetable doesn't need any special config, just have the MPU-401 interface configured (that's the P330 bit) and tell games with General MIDI support that the interface is at address 0x330.

dionb wrote on 2023-05-31, 07:03:

Note that you don't need to mess around with old driver packages, the OPTi 930 is a PnP chip and is supported by Unisound.

Unless I'm mistaken, the first fully PnP card from OPTi was the 82C931.

The 930 is semi-PnP at best, if you can even call it that. It doesn't get detected by Win9x at all, and you have to install it manually through the "Add New Hardware" wizard. A PnP BIOS can't initialize it or configure its resources in pure DOS either. I haven't tried Unisound with it, but the official drivers are fairly lightweight and have a nice GUI for configuring every setting. No TSR crap or anything like that.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-05-31, 07:36:

Unless I'm mistaken, the first fully PnP card from OPTi was the 82C931. […]
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dionb wrote on 2023-05-31, 07:03:

Note that you don't need to mess around with old driver packages, the OPTi 930 is a PnP chip and is supported by Unisound.

Unless I'm mistaken, the first fully PnP card from OPTi was the 82C931.

The 930 is semi-PnP at best, if you can even call it that. It doesn't get detected by Win9x at all, and you have to install it manually through the "Add New Hardware" wizard. A PnP BIOS can't initialize it or configure its resources in pure DOS either. I haven't tried Unisound with it, but the official drivers are fairly lightweight and have a nice GUI for configuring every setting. No TSR crap or anything like that.

Whoops, looks like I messed up there. You're right. Corrected my post.

Unisound OPTi support list:

OPTi: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- - OPTi 82C924 in PnP mode - OPTi 82C925 in P […]
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OPTi:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
- OPTi 82C924 in PnP mode
- OPTi 82C925 in PnP mode
- OPTi 82C931 and 82C933 chip based cards.

Funny, I already bought one of these exact cards last year, but from a different eBay seller. That seller has since completely disappeared, but judging by the photo of this and other board I bought, this seller is the same guy.

And the price went up 50%.