Best soundcard for older games (1999ish)

[SonicIce]

I'm messing around with my computer to make the best platform for old games like:
Half-Life, SiN, Quake 2, Need for Speed III and Porsche, Unreal Tournament, and other 1999 era games.

I have all the games set up on a Windows 98 SE hard drive, and I plug in my Voodoo 3 for Glide action.

But what is the best sound card for these games? I know Aureal 3D was popular back then but don't know of any specific cards. I assume I can't find them new anymore. What can I find on eBay or in FS/FT?

 

[Howard]

Perhaps the original SoundBlaster Live! cards?

 

[Zap Brannigan]

Originally posted by: Howard
Perhaps the original SoundBlaster Live! cards?

F- that!

Aureal Vortex 2!!!

 

[alcoholbob]

Ray tracing!

 

[Jolt2]

I/O Magic Aureal Vortex 4-Channel & Digital PCI Audio Card

All gone after one day of being posted here.

 

[Varun]

Originally posted by: Zap Brannigan

Originally posted by: Howard
Perhaps the original SoundBlaster Live! cards?

F- that!

Aureal Vortex 2!!!

Aureal Vortex 2 for sure!
edit - if this is XP I am not sure if there are even drivers for it.

 

[Ika]

Sound Blaster Live! is a good call.

 

[SonicIce]

Hmm vortex 2 sounds interesting.

 

[CP5670]

A Vortex 2 card would probably be the best for those games specifically (diamond MX300 comes to mind), but if you want to play even older stuff, the Live can emulate an SB16 on most old motherboards, which is a very useful feature in DOS games.

 

[Piano Man]

Diamond MX300. I had it before creative took over Aureal. Better 3D sound by far than EAX at the time. If those games use A3D or A3D 2.0. Go for it.

 

[SonicIce]

Old benchmarks show a pretty large performance hit from enabling 3daudio. They were tested on pretty old cpu's though and i'd be using my 2800 athlon 64 so it might not be too bad.

 

[Zap Brannigan]

A3d was so ahead of it's time that Creative has finally caught up with the X-Fi cards for the most part.

Imagine if Aureal was never bought out, and were still making new cards? It's too bad that it was not to be.

 

[rasczak]

I really liked the SB Audigy (not Live!) card myself. I was really impressed with the sound in games.

 

[shortylickens]

I was happy with my Soundblaster PCI 512 for many years.
But for availability I'd go with the Live.