how viable is the aureal vortex2?

[loserbutt]

hey I was just wondering about it. aureal 2.0 was pretty damn awesome... creative still cant hold a candle to it. and the only thing holding it back was cpu usage, but with our ridiculously fast cpus today thats no big deal...u might lose 5fps out of 90. how viable is it? how does the sound quality compare to the newest audigy's and turtle beach soundcards? and how is support for it?

 

[Snoop]

Drivers... if your using 98 your set, 2000 or xp, its touch and go.

 

[erikiksaz]

In my experiences, the Vortex 2 sounded pretty much the same as the Turtle Beach. This was with my Grados and Microworks and the usual cds played through cdreader plugin and mp3s through the MAD plugin. Oh yes, and this is under winXP as well. Games work fine (depending on your motherboard, you might need to use wpcreset to get things moving smoothly), but i'm not sure if A3d is existant in winXp. So far it doesn't seem to be there.

 

[farscape]

Any info that you might want on the Vortex 2, try Text. This enthusiast site seems to have the most help on this card.

Win 98 drivers are real good, they have a beta for 2K, but I don't know if anyone has tried to write for anything more recent.

Darn fingers..... That's www.vortexofsound.com

 

[farscape]

 

[sandorski]

The 3d positioning in games is still the best, in Win98, but doesn't work in Win2k or XP. IMO, the sound quality is not as good as the Audigy, but it is pretty close.

 

[Dufusyte]

Vortex2 is still the ultimate gaming card for 9x.

They are getting hard to find online, and no, you cannot have mine.

 

[BD231]

The vortex 2 was and is great. I think the Audigy dose just as well or better though. I wouldn't dare use vortex sound with xp or 2000, I tried it once and it just didn't work out.

 

[Supradude]

i agree, poor aureal =( i had to get an Audigy when is witched to XP, just not enough support to justify it's awesomeness, but my xitel storm platinum has a happy home in a win98 gaming box... hehe

 

[Nack]

As long as you don't need the 3d sound (i.e. a 4.1 setup), the Win2k drivers work fine, and the sound quality is awesome. I got a V2 card free with rebate a few months ago, and put it in a Win2k machine with microsoft DSS 80 speakers (the ones that were supposed to be USB). No surround sound, but great quality sound for listening to MP3s, and playing most games.

Nack