Diamond MX300 or MX400?

[BBA]

The MX300 used a Aureal A3D chip. Aureal was bought out by Creative Labs. It is now dead.

The MX400 uses a ESS MEASTRO chip. It is much superior to the MX300, and even to the SoundBlaster Live, but not in MX400 form.

The 5 channel version of the card is offerred by CompUSA as an inhouse brand. I have one of them and like it because it natively supports many more modes than the SB-Live, including EAX, A3D v2, etc...etc...etc....
It even does Dolby AC3 decoding in 5.1 downmixed to 4.1 from the 5 speaker outputs it has. ( And it comes with the WinDVD multichannel AC3 version )

[Psylocke]

well i guess i'm not buying mx300 anymore...
maybe i should just stick with sb live.

does sb live support a3d 2.0? i wanted a card that supports both (EAX and A3D 2.0).

now i'm kinda disappionted...

thx for the info

[Jeff7]

I've got a Digital Research Vortex2 card. It works good, and the latest driver updates give it A3D 3.0 capability, and it has EAX 1.0 support. More details on updates in the newest reference drivers are here (http://www.vortexofsound.com/techhelp/th-v2a43.htm) .

If you want more info, e-mail me at jeffalta5@entermail.net

[This message has been edited by Jeff7 (edited 10-14-2000).]

[Psylocke]

i was originally going to buy the mx300 but since the mx400 soundcard poped up, i'm kinda stuck in the middle.

i read some reviews from numerous places and mx400 doesn't seem to be better than mx300.
the mx300 is pretty old but i've been hearing complaints concerning Diamond's slow driver updates. Apparently, EAX was suppose to be supported in the next set of updates from diamond. so i went to the company's official site and they DONT even have the product listed. i check the support section for drivers and guess what, no drivers available! i goto download.com to look for drivers and it seems as so that the drivers that they have are about 1 year old. sad, it sounds like a great sound card.

are theere any sites which have released some newer drivers for this card (mx300)?

[Psylocke]

I can't find that card in any local stores...
will the card support EAX 2.0 / 3.0 with future driver updats?

about sound blaster live, i know it supports EAX 1.0/2.0, what exactly is EAX3.0? 4.0? aren't those similar to A3D?

[Dputiger]

I have a MX 300 and I've seen them selling for $30-40 bucks these days. FOr that amount of money there's no better sound card I've seen.

The Live! is still a better card--but if you're tight on cash I'd take an MX 300. It supports 4 channel output and the sound is great for music if you have good speakers.

[jad1097]

BBA how much is it? I know better than to ask you since I know what OS you use but are there W2K drivers for it also?

[Psylocke]

mx300 card is $10 less than the sb live value, local stores. i think i will get the sb live value and wait for a sound card that supports all APIs.

[BBA]

CompUSA sells it for $50. It's worth it.

Wholesale is $30.

It's worth it just due to the fact is comes with WinDVD AC-3.

Yes, I am using it in W2K now. It runs fine on a 44MHz PCI bus also, the SB-Live will not.

[Jeff7]

Yes, it currently supports A3D 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, as well as EAX 1.0. There probably won't be any driver updates in the future, as Aureal has been bought by Creative. But the card has worked fine for me with the current drivers.

[Psylocke]

BBA, are you talking about the mx300? or mx400?

can you send a link with the most current drivers for the mx300, that is if you were referring that card.

i was going to buy the OEM version, unfortunately, in canadam, the OEM is around $50 =(

[jad1097]

Thanks BBA I think I will pick one up next time I am up by CompUSA.