VOGONS


First post, by adadak

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I've been looking for a sound card for my Windows 98 PC that I'm currently building. Sound Blasters Live! are widely available at reasonable prices and apparently they are decent sound cards for Windows 9x games so I thought it'd be a good choice to buy one of these. There are several models produced between 1998 and the early 2000s and it's really difficult to say which is "the best". Is CT4830 better than CT4670?

Reply 1 of 9, by buckeye

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I have model no. SB0100 and it works well for me.

Asus P5N-E Intel Core 2 Duo 3.33ghz. 4GB DDR2 Geforce 470 1GB SB X-Fi Titanium 650W XP SP3
Intel SE440BX P3 450 256MB 80GB SSD Radeon 7200 64mb SB 32pnp 350W 98SE
MSI x570 Gaming Pro Carbon Ryzen 3700x 32GB DDR4 Zotac RTX 3070 8GB WD Black 1TB 850W

Reply 2 of 9, by Joseph_Joestar

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They should all be roughly the same in terms of feature set. Except for that Dell SB200 which isn't a true SBLive.

The value models sometimes lack SPDIF-in for digital CD audio, but I don't know of any other significant differences.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 3 of 9, by swaaye

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It's nice to be able to install Liveware 3 drivers. That probably limits you to the initial Live and Live Value cards.

http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?file … menustate=43,36

Reply 4 of 9, by BushLin

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There are Win98 drivers for the Audigy 2 ZS also.

Screw period correct; I wanted a faster system back then. I choose no dropped frames, super fast loading, fully compatible and quiet operation.

Reply 5 of 9, by kepstin

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Maybe not a popular choice, but I'm personally a fan of the SB0220. It's a Dell OEM card, and requires a specific driver CD - but it's a full EMU10k1 chip, equivalent to the standard Live! 5.1 cards and includes the VXD/WDM driver switcher app.

The reason I like this card specifically is that some of them have the Dell front panel connector populated on the board, which can be trivially adapted to connect to the HD-Audio front panel connector on a modern PC case with the same cable as later Audigy models also use.

The Audigy & Audigy 2 also work on Win98, but I like the look of the Live! control panel software better, the Audigy cards have too much of that post-2000 appearance to them 😀

Reply 6 of 9, by darry

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kepstin wrote on 2020-08-25, 02:34:

Maybe not a popular choice, but I'm personally a fan of the SB0220. It's a Dell OEM card, and requires a specific driver CD - but it's a full EMU10k1 chip, equivalent to the standard Live! 5.1 cards and includes the VXD/WDM driver switcher app.

The reason I like this card specifically is that some of them have the Dell front panel connector populated on the board, which can be trivially adapted to connect to the HD-Audio front panel connector on a modern PC case with the same cable as later Audigy models also use.

The Audigy & Audigy 2 also work on Win98, but I like the look of the Live! control panel software better, the Audigy cards have too much of that post-2000 appearance to them 😀

I still prefer a Live! Drive for front panel connectivity or a direct connection to a mixer . The reason for preferring a Live! Drive is to be better isolated from noise : the Live! Drive and its descendants have their own DAC and analogue headphone output amplifier .

Reply 8 of 9, by darry

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Jorpho wrote on 2020-08-25, 03:39:

Isn't there still an old KX-project driver that supports Windows 98? Is that good for anything?

AFAICR, KX Project does not support hardware EAX , so it probably isn't optimal for gaming anyway .

Reply 9 of 9, by chinny22

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The cards themselves are fine, it's the drivers that are a nightmare. If you can find the matching drivers for the CT number you should be ok.

As mentioned above it also maybe checking out prices for Audigy 1 or 2 which will let you avoid the driver mess all together . They go for a bit more but not stupid prices