Diamond Monster Sound MX400

Half-life Performance - Pentium III 550E

Half-life is another game that supports both A3D 2.0 and EAX 2.0. Unfortunately, Half-life also has a built-in software reverb engine that is not compatible with Aureal's Vortex2 hardware. Thus, the Vortex2 does part of the 3D sound effects in hardware and part in software. Throw in the fact that Half-life has traditionally been very CPU dependent, and the Vortex2 looks to be in trouble.

The MX400 was tested with EAX support, which is closer to its native support.

Due to the complex geometry of Half-life and it's dependence on CPU power for wavetracing, the Vortex2 takes the greatest performance hit. The MX400 comes in right in the middle, while the SBLive! has a clear lead. Once again, with 3D sound disabled, the cards are virtually identical.