Aureal Vortex 2 vs Audigy 2

[Varun]

A long long time ago, I had a Diamond Monster MX300 sound card, and I used to play Unreal Tournament in A3D. It was amazing positional sound.

After I upgraded to my first Athlon, the MX300 would crash my system in any 3d Game, so I picked up a Soundblaster Live! and have used it ever since. Although it works flawlessly, I have never been impressed with 3d sound from the Soundblaster, and I found EAX to be no where near as good as A3D.

Are the newer versions of the Creative cards better in 3d than they used to be? Are they better than A3D now? I realise Creative did by Aureal a while back, and I hope it has helped the 3d sound of the cards.

I would just like some opinions of the differences, as well as any of the other cards out there. My Soundblaster Live! is likely almost due for replacement.

 

[boyRacer]

Some say the new EAX is as good as A3D was... i personally don't know... my previous Live and Audigy was nowhere near it though. I miss Aureal.

 

[Pariah]

Creative cards support A3D 1.0, not 2.0. With A3D support completely dead at this point, hardware support is about as useful as adding Glide support to a Radeon 9800XT. With current games, Audigy's are easily the best gaming cards available.

 

[Varun]

Pariah, you completely misunderstood my question. Sorry about the poor wording.

Is the current EAX >= A3D back when it was used?

Creative purchased Aureal, so I am hoping that Aureal was able to help EAX sound better for 3d sound.

 

[Schadenfroh]

A3D>EAX, but only on aureal sound cards in 98

 

[Pariah]

Whether or not it is better is pretty much irrelevant at this point, when EAX is all that is out there now. If you're looking to upgrade a Soundblaster Live!, then yes, EAX HD on current Audigy cards is much better than older EAX versions on the Live!.

 

[manko]

<---------- still using MX300

 

[sandorski]

If you will be playing older games, A3D will be better, but most games these days use D3D, Dolby Surround, or EAX/2/3, so an Audigy 2 will be better.

I don't think that's really what you want to know, so this might help: As for "Positioning", I think my SQ2500 was superior in Positioning then the Audigy I have now, but it's quite hard to tell since I'm going from 2 year old memories.

 

[Varun]

Thanks for all the replies.

 

[Sunny129]

yeah i also had an aureal vortex card back in the day, and played UT like you. now i have the philips acoustic edge. its a very nice card, but it has its pros and cons as well.