Haven't done it with 2 PCI cards, but its definitely possible. Only problem will be possible resource conflicts but again PCI shouldn't have a problem with this.
Just install both cards like normal. You then set whichever soundcard you want to use as the primary sound device in control panel and the game will default to that.
Some games will even let you pick which sound card to use so no need to do the above.

I thought of another idea a bit earlier, perhaps dualbooting two installations of windows 98se, and only installing drivers for the vortex2 in the first, and only installing drivers for the audigy 2 in the second windows install, and that way I could reboot into the other windows install when I want to use the other sound card. I thought that could work fine. But if I can actually also have them both within a single windows install that might be even nicer. Guess I'll give it a try then. I don't currently have an Audigy 2 but I'll get one and test this. I guess it will be better not only for games that support EAX and/or Surround but dont support A3D, but also for games that don't support either it might give better sound quality if nothing else, considering the fact it has a much larger PCB with a lot more components soldered onto it, I bet the sound quality is better than the montego 2. So I guess I'll try to use the montego 2 only for A3D games, and the audigy 2 for everything else.

Install the vortex2 first and create 2 hardware profiles, one called Vortex2 and the other SBLive. Boot into both hardware profiles and disable the Vortex2 sound card in device manager.

Backup the a3d.dll from c:\windows\system to the desktop in a folder called a3d\vortex2.

Install the SBLive and boot into the SBLive hardware profile. Backup its a3d.dll to your desktop in a folder called a3d\sblive.

Then boot into the Vortex2 hardware profile and disable the SBLive and enable the Vortex2.

Whenever you boot into the hardware profile of choice, manually or batch overwrite the a3d.dll with the proper file from desktop\a3d\?\a3d.dll into c:\windows\system.

Also, for both cards don't install their MS-DOS drivers because they can conflict with each other.

I see, that's quite a bit of trouble to go trough. What is "hardware profiles"? Never heard that term before... Oh,and Im thinking of Audigy 2 ZS, not SB Live 5.1, the Audigy 2 is a newer model, Im guessing it might not have DOS drivers? And why do I need to swap the a3d.dll file, can't I just leave the Vortex2 a3d.dll file, after all Im not going to play A3D games with the audigy?

Stretch wrote:

Install the vortex2 first and create 2 hardware profiles, one called Vortex2 and the other SBLive. Boot into both hardware profi […]
Show full quote

Install the vortex2 first and create 2 hardware profiles, one called Vortex2 and the other SBLive. Boot into both hardware profiles and disable the Vortex2 sound card in device manager.

Backup the a3d.dll from c:\windows\system to the desktop in a folder called a3d\vortex2.

Install the SBLive and boot into the SBLive hardware profile. Backup its a3d.dll to your desktop in a folder called a3d\sblive.

Then boot into the Vortex2 hardware profile and disable the SBLive and enable the Vortex2.

Whenever you boot into the hardware profile of choice, manually or batch overwrite the a3d.dll with the proper file from desktop\a3d\?\a3d.dll into c:\windows\system.

Also, for both cards don't install their MS-DOS drivers because they can conflict with each other.

That's how I would do it also!

You can also just manually disable the card you're not using in device manager.

With the A3D.DLL file, I think you can just put it into the game folder, where the executable lies.

God Of Gaming wrote:

I see, that's quite a bit of trouble to go trough. What is "hardware profiles"? Never heard that term before... Oh,and Im thinking of Audigy 2 ZS, not SB Live 5.1, the Audigy 2 is a newer model, Im guessing it might not have DOS drivers? And why do I need to swap the a3d.dll file, can't I just leave the Vortex2 a3d.dll file, after all Im not going to play A3D games with the audigy?

I've run 3 sound cards in 1 machine: Audigy2, Vortex2, and Yamaha YMF744 and if I didn't swap the a3d file I would get BSODs even if I was just playing an MS-DOS game in Win98's command.com.

I see. Then rather than swapping dll files, it might be less of a hassle to do what I thought of at first - dualboot two win98 installations

I know this is an old thread, but it's the only one that pops up on Google when searching this subject.... so here goes:

I'm building a high power Win98SE rig, around the Gigabyte GA- MF3 motherboard.
It's Socket AM2 with the nForce3-250 chipset and AGP. And between the ASRock & Gigabyte websites, i've managed to find every Win98 driver needed for it. And I only had to disable USB mouse support in the BIOS, for 98 to install perfectly from a PATA CD drive, to a PATA HDD (wouldn't install on SATA unfortunately).

I connected an Audigy2ZS in the 5th(last) PCI slot, and installed VXD drivers and SB16 emulation according to this tutorial: Guide: Installing Windows 9x and DOS drivers on Audigy cards (version 3.1)
I set the card to IRQ3, and the SB16 "fake card" to IRQ7.
(just as an FYI, on this particular machine, sound doesn't work at all in DOS mode. But MIDI and FM does work reliably for the few DOS games that managed to start from Windows... with SoundBlaster sounds working rarely.)

After that, I backed up the Audigy's "A3D.DLL" file from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM , and connected my Aureal Vortex 2 (Diamond MX300) in the 4th PCI slot.
Didn't disable anything from Device Manager, and just Installed the Aureal Vortex 2041 driver (the variant that does not install any type of DOS drivers), I agreed for the installer to replace the "A3D.DLL" file, and the system automatically defaulted to the Aureal Vortex 2 as the main card, allocating to itself IRQ5 (as it was the only free IRQ left).
And... everything just worked. No blue screen, no problems, no nothing. I just select the default card I want from the Control Panel, and switch the "A3D.DLL" file before starting a game as @Stretch advised a few posts back (Thank you! @Stretch).
Both EAX and A3D2 work perfectly, without even a restart needed between them!

One thing I may need to mention, is that from the Aureal Vortex card, only the Windows sound card is installed in Device Manager, and nothing else. No midi, no gameport, no SB16 drivers... I got a windows notification right after installing, that said something along the lines of "the card is not on a main PCI bus, and that's why nothing else installed".
But since A3D is working perfectly, and I already got excellent MIDI and a gameport from the Audigy, then it's actually better this way.... so I didn't bother to investigate any further.

Hope this will be useful to someone.

Oh, I have since figured it out. In my current main win98se build I have 3 different pci sound cards - vortex 2, audigy 2 and a turtle beach santa cruz (sensaura) and I did it with a triple boot of 3 copies of win98 (using system commander), then each of the win98 copies is set up to only work with one of the 3 sound cards (drivers installed, card enabled in device manager) while the other cards are disabled in device manager and have no drivers installed.... it works fine this way, no conflicts so far, then I just select which of the 3 win98 copies to boot into depending on which card I wanna use

God Of Gaming wrote on 2026-03-20, 11:42:

Oh, I have since figured it out. In my current main win98se build I have 3 different pci sound cards - vortex 2, audigy 2 and a turtle beach santa cruz (sensaura) and I did it with a triple boot of 3 copies of win98 (using system commander), then each of the win98 copies is set up to only work with one of the 3 sound cards (drivers installed, card enabled in device manager) while the other cards are disabled in device manager and have no drivers installed.... it works fine this way, no conflicts so far, then I just select which of the 3 win98 copies to boot into depending on which card I wanna use

I also have a SS7 MVP3 rig with 3 sound cards:
- CMI8330 (almost perfect SoundBlaster16 & WSS clone)
- The PicoGUS + WP32 McCAKE addon (Gravis Ultrasound emulation + Roland MT-32 emulation)
- Audigy2ZS (installed for Windows only)

They all live happily under the same Win98SE installation, without any special tricks ☺️

And after my recent shenanigans with the AM2 rig, I am fairly confident that there is also room for a 4th card (the Vortex2) under the same "roof" if I manage to play with the IRQs just right 😁