Dragon-Lord

I just moved my SBLive to my "legacy" machine (Tyan BX series @ 750+ mhz p3) and put an Santa Cruz in my new dual VP6 (@960+ mhz). The Santa Cruz only cost $80 and is phenomenal. Now, DirectX8 support is still not available in the drivers, so I can't speak to how good d3d sound is (right now, it is aweful, hehe). But they make it clear that they are only up to DX7, so I'll give them some slack. But not as long as the year and a half I have been waiting on Creative that is. The last time I spent money on a Creative Labs branded product was last summer...and I intend to keep it that way. And I won't be authorizing their products in any of my companies either. Creative Labs forgot the simple lesson that while the consumers don't run SMP (yet), the IT Pros who authorize their corporate volume (and often high profile) purchases often do... :}

There are some patches for USB problems on VIA chipsets on the via site (and others). I suspect you may also have a PCI card in the slot that shares IRQs with USB. Again, check your manual, or the via site (or www.viahardware.com, www.2cpu.com, etc. for examples and fixes). Hope that helps, :}

Donald2B, you are missing something very important here. The W2K drivers that come with the OS do not enable Full acceleration in the Sound Playback control panel (Basic only). By default, the new drivers enable Full by default. The problem with ALL of the SBLive drivers is that they crackle, pop, crash etc. under full acceleration with SMP systems. And of course, full acceleration is required for EAX etc. So, you have the choice of trading poor EAX support (full on SMP) for no EAX support (Basic)...your call. So, you aren't really doing any good to go back to the old drivers, since you can accomplish the same thing by running the newer driver sets and just setting acceleration back to basic if you are having problems (like everyone else running SBLive on SMP). Hope that helps, :} PS It is nice to know that in this age of constant upgrades and changes, that one thing remains a constant, year after year - Soundblaster Live still doesn't work correctly on Windows 2000.

The Quincux AA setting is very nice. I leave it on by default now. Turning on anisotrophic filtering made a HUGE difference in OpenGL texturing in LW3D. The combination of both makes for a very nice realtime presentation. Which is indeed what I used it for at Comdex-Chicago. :}

Just came to post the review I finally found and here Clutch has already found it. That's one of them. Thanks! I think you will be seeing more... :}

Actually, it was a review mentioning 2D quality that got me to do a side-by-side eval (still can't find it now, doh!). I was dubious as well, for the reasons you mentioned, but sure enough I can switchbox flip between two machines (one GF1DDR and one GF3) on the same monitor with the same settings and definitely see a clarity difference. Maybe it is just better signal strength or something. Regardless, this is a subjective issue and I doubt anyone would pick the GF3 purely based on this issue. :}

I have compared all three side by side (because I have all three on hand), and stand by my previous statement. More so, reviews are springing up on the net confirming my position that the GF3 has superior 2D image quality to its predecessors and rivals that of the Matrox series. I will try and find some and post them here for you, but no doubt you will start coming across them as well. I will agree this is a subjective argument, but at 1600x1200x32bpp (on a 21" Hitachi monitor) I am confident in my assertion that I for one am seeing noticeably improved image quality and color vibrancy across all 2D and 3D applications. Since I do own one, I can say this quite confidently. If you do not, then I am not quite sure how you can dismiss my assertion out of hand... :}

For me, the extra zestiness at very high resolutions (1600x1200) would be worth it, since I do a lot of high-end 3D on my system. The GF1 and 2 gave me a lot of bandwidth limitations at that resolution. But now, with my GF3, I can turn on all settings in Q3 for example, and still win games at 1280 resolution. For 3D, I can model and animate with the Quincux AA and anistrophic texture filtering on and it is very smooth indeed. As drivers and games/apps are written to take advantage of GF3, I only expect this to get better and better. It is hard to quantify with old style game benchmarks, but the GF3 also has superior 2D image quality. Easily on par with the previous top of class Matrox cards. Even through a switchbox, I am getting crystal clear displays with excellent color and contrast, when my old GF1 DDR was quite muddy in comparison. yeehaw, this board rocks... :}

Does the Santa Cruz handle SMP issues any better than the SBLive? If I does, I am buying one tomorrow... :}

As I mentioned above, I wasn't intending to buy a GF3 anytime soon. But I was just GIVEN one yesterday...and it rules tremendously. Sometimes...just sometimes, life is unexpectedly good. :}

Or you do high-end 3D for a living...in which case it is an invaluable addition to your rendering habit. :}

I am running the Geforce3 on a 1.6ghz P4 and I have to say it is S-W-E-E-T! $600 seems steep regardless of the power, so I will probably wait until the price drops before I buy one for my system at home. But, as Ferris says, "if you have the means, I highly recommend you pick one up." :}

Winpoet 2.0 works in Windows 2000. That is what one of my clients is using on Win2K server and it works well enough. Earthlink drops connection often, so I use KeepRAS or similar programs to keep pinging things. So far, WinPoet and Win2K for Earthlink supports VPN in and out, and ICS for internet sharing. I have not been successful in configuring the win2k server NAT using it though. If anyone has suggestions for that, I'd sure appreciate it. Here is a link with lots of good info and DLs... http://homepages.pathfinder.gr/stevegreek/ftp/Navas%20Cable%20Modem-DSL%20Tuning%20Guide.htm#Top Hope it helps you as much as it did me. :}

I have been testing the various DX8 betas with all of the leaked Det3 drivers for my Geforce DDR under Win2K. Through various iterations, my 3DMark2000 (directx) scores would be either 2500 or 3300, never anything in between. Well, it looks like the latest DX8rc and the latest leaked det3 rev 6.47 drivers put me back at the 3300 score, so I think something that has been intermittent under w2k is now working again. I thought I would post this for those of you who are working with DX8 under Win2K like I have been. peace, :}

Use winzip to uncompress the main installation program file (DX80nteng.exe) into a new folder. You will find the uninstaller executable in that new folder. :}

never mind. If you uncompress the main DX80ntend.exe file with winzip you can run a program called undx8w2k.exe to do this. will advise :}

Appreciate the attempted assist, but the program won't install under W2K. It acts like is does, but nothing comes out in the program directory or as icons...sigh. Thanks anyway, :}

Thank you muchly! :}

I am disappointed in RC0 as it dropped my 3Dmark scores back to DX7 levels (3300 back to 2500). I had the second release installed before that. Anyone have a DX8 for W2K uninstaller that I can use, then try different versions for comparison? :}

www.vortexofsound.com has excellent driver sets and installation info for the MX300. I was able to get mine up and running quite nicely. However, they are buggy, and a WDM release is supposed to be in the works. :}

"Strobing" is most often DirectX w/Vsync off related. I recommend turning Vsync back on by default (D3D display properties for your adapter). This happened to me in Darkstone as well. Games where framerate vs. vsync (like Q3A for OpenGL) let you disable it in the game, so you can usually leave the "on by default". :}

marketing...

I believe that it is a requirement of DVD copyright licensing that the software/drivers only work on a local drive. The only OS that I know of that can host the remote dvd as if it was a local device is QNX. I know this because my brother wrote the code to do just that. :}

A better question is how to apply the 2.26 path to the Unreal mission pack, Return to Na Pali?! The website is 2 years out of date. Anyone know what I need to change? It can't be *that* complicated. :}

try www.stardock.com or www.windowblinds.net :}