Honestly I'd try each one of them, and keep the one that you think sounds the best and is the most compatible. Though I can vouch for the Audiodrive since I've got one here, a decent little card with pretty good FM synth on it.

Do you have exactly those two cards, or just cards with the same chipsets? If not those cards which ones do you have?

And do you intend to use them under DOS or Windows?

ESS' chipsets are some of the least troublesome SBPro2-compatible cards for DOS, and don't require a TSR, which means no loss of memory. The ESS FM synth isn't exactly OPL3, but close enough unless you're a real purist. For DOS only, this is probably the best solution. It will work fine in Windows too, as SBPro2.

OPTi 92x chips have decent but not perfect SBPro2 support under DOS, and do actually need a driver to run, but have WSS support as added feature, which isn't really great in DOS (few games use it), but can help in Windows.

Both chipsets have been used on very good cards and on extremely crap ones, so the cards you have can decide the question more than the chips. Some also came with wavetable support on-card. I have an OPTi-based one with (pretty crap) wavetable. Not exactly going to beat Yamaha or Roland anytime soon, but better than nothing if you don't have sound modules or high-end cards.

I don't really see a reason to use both, they have big overlap in terms of features.

WIth a P120 I really wouldn't recommend the SBLive or any other PCI card for that matter. Given the SBLive is notoriously PCI-sensitive (think Via 686B-bug), I wouldn't even be confident it would work at all. It's a great Win98SE card (just use .VXD drivers, not .WDM), but in DOS it needs TSRs like almost all PCI cards. Only upshot is that it supports SB16 (but not SBPro2). You could try it next to one of the other two if you can get the resources to play nice to compare SB16 to SBPro2...

Here photos. No idea what are the brand names 😕. Mfg.1995-96.
AK1868PNP 3196 ESS ES1869F G447 TTU28508A. UTC CL47 TEA2025. 6AAKKTK SN74LS138N.

MJ-009R06 OPTi 82C924. CRYSTAL CS4231A-KL UKAZUF9630. LS-212 631GH. 5C3 HA17324.
Electromyne.de says "Typhoon Media" https://www.electromyne.de/Sound-Cards-Typhoo … -like-OPL3.html

I have both of such cards installed in various retro PCs. I'd go for the ESS. While the OPTi isn't bad either, its software/drivers are odd. The ESS on the other hand just requires a call of esscfg.exe to work and you can even change resources on-the-fly.

derSammler wrote:

I have both of such cards installed in various retro PCs. I'd go for the ESS. While the OPTi isn't bad either, its software/drivers are odd. The ESS on the other hand just requires a call of esscfg.exe to work and you can even change resources on-the-fly.

Can confirm. Both are good but ESS is easier to deal with/has better drivers.

...under DOS. We still don't know what OS he's intending to run.

No trashing!!!
Use the ESS though if you plan on using DOS too.

Here are all my low cost budget builds(free or recycle picked) that I have made during the last 1-2year and some logic behind them:
I'm pretty much happy with them now.
O/S=Win98se
1.) 1995-96 Build= Pentium 1 120 Mhz, 48mb, S3Trio64V+ 1mb PCI for dos games that need ISA sound cards.
2.) 1999-00 Build= Duron 650 Mhz, 512mb, Voodoo3-3000 16mb AGP for early pre 2000 3D games and 3Dfx support.
3.) 2005 Build= 1xCore AMD Athlon 64 3200+(754), 512mb, ATI 9800 Pro AGP. IDE,PCI and AGP for most demanding Win98se games.

Latest new 2019 build spent about 500e. Wanted to play Hitman 2(2018) without spending huge money.
Haven't really played or bought new PC parts for a decade 10 years. Too busy working. 🤣
- Intel i5-9400.(Thought long and hard if I continue buying AMD but I bought this time Intel.)
- MSI MPG Z390 (LGA1151).
- 8gbx2=16gb.
+ Using old HD5870 1GB(2011). Still waiting those graphic card prices to lower Nvidia RTX 2060/2070 is still high 400-500e

3 builds with Win98SE?

I'd really only do DOS on the P120 build if you already have a 1999 build. Consider that Win98SE was released in 1999, the only thing you gain by running Win98SE on a 5 year older build is the painful experience of how running Win98SE on legacy hardware felt. You've upgraded RAM to the point where it wouldn't be thrashing, but it's still a slow CPU and no game that needed Win98 would run nicely on that. Conversely, even older Win95 games would run fine on your 1999 build.

With these systems, use the SBLive in the 1999-build (still with .VXD drivers), and the ESS on the 1995-build, unless the analog section is really crap (lots of self-noise).

I have bad memory but 1996-1997 IBM Aptiva which used Cyrix 6x86: speed was "133-166 Mhz" had Win95 bundled and it runned well.
But I can't accurately remember that well.

The ESS cards are compatible with basically everything. I would keep that one.