DaveMan

3dfx and nVidia have changed places with the Geforce2/V5. Previous to this, the 3dfx card was the all out speed champ, and the nVidia card was 5 fps behind, but offering much better visual quality and more options. With the V5/G2, 3dfx's card has a better FSAA implementation, and is only a few FPS behind (well, until you turn on FSAA, that is ). Thats why I'm switching from my TNT2u to a V5, as soon as I can figure out if the damned things work with dual proc systems. (I have an MX300...if I get another piece of HW that doesn't have SMP-capable drivers, my next purchase will be a high powered rifle. )

And how the heck am I a senior member with 6 posts? I suppose its counting my senior status at the old site, it isn't counting the actual posts.

OK...Aureal might be dead, but Diamond/S3 still has assloads of money, and I assume that a large number (if not the majority) of Vortex/Vortex2 cards were fabricated by Diamond. Anyone interested in doing a little unpaid legwork to look into whether or not a class action lawsuit is possible? I'd do it, but I know nothing about law.

Well, FYI: NT4 drivers usually work fairly well in W2K. NVidia Detonator 3.06 drivers worked fine (the exe install didn't work, but the inf install did), and the fairly accepted practice for W2K is installing NT4 drivers. I'm not angry at Diamond/Aureal for not having working W2K drivers, obviously its not their fault. All of my hostility to Diamond/Aureal is based on the fact that the Vortex2 doesn't work on a SMP system. This would suggest sloppy programming in the drivers themselves. (If I had to guess as to what the problem is, I'd say its an issue with multithreading; they probably assumed that only one thread would be processing at any one time, and created some form of deadlock or race condition...) The true flaw here, however, is the fact that nowhere on the MX300 box, or in any online FAQ from Diamond/S3 or Aureal does it say ANYTHING about a problem with this. I had to learn that this was a known issue from 2cpu.com, of all places. That is very unacceptable, and I don't believe that I will be buying any more Diamond/S3 or Aureal products at any time in the future.

Hrm, any tips on getting A3D to work with HL then? When I start an HL game with A3D on, I get the 'Initializing A3D... Failed' message in the console. Is there a special version of a3dapi.dll I should snag? I should install Q3A later...only other game I have with A3D... At least then I will know whether its an A3D problem or an HL problem. (Remember HL v1.0.1.0, and how they broke A3D in NT? Valve sucks like that.)

Ack, almost forgot... I'm using Aureal reference drivers v2.05.05 for NT4. I'm going to download the other 2 releases they have listed and try those, and also try Diamond's drivers if those don't work.

Um, when I tried to install the MX300 drivers on W2K Pro final, I end up getting an error that occurs when I click OK on the little bitmap logo window (anyone who's installed Aureal ref drivers knows that I'm not insane ). Error: "Unable to load driver. Check PnP OS settings in the BIOS setup and make sure your sound card is plugged in." I've done this with PnP OS both on and off, and the sound card IS plugged in. (I get normal sound with the W2K native drivers...I still want A3D though.) One note, before I post my system specs: I know that SMP doesn't work with the MX300 as of NT4 (found that out the hard way...), but I'm still going to try it with W2K. Also on that note, the W2K native Vortex 2 drivers handle SMP just fine, but with no A3D. System: 2x P3 500mhz 128MB ultra-generic RAM ASUS P2B-D Diamond V770u (working) Diamond MX300 (PCI #2) USR Modem (ISA #2) W2K Pro final (*cough* Santa Claus left it in my downloads folder *cough*) -DaveMan

Yeah...I actually noticed the same thing with the TNT2 drivers. Desktop was fine, but no OGL. (I completely forgot to try D3D...no reason to assume it would work either.) Also, the new .exe drivers that nVidia releases don't work with W2K...but you can always extract them and .inf install them (the exe is just some bastardized cabinet file).