Live! cards vs Santacruz
I recently bought a Santa Cruz in place of my SB LIve! value and all i can say is that Turtlebeach has their act together. They are in their 3rd series of beta drivers which they say are far from done yet but their package is far better than Live!ware.
I recently bought a Santa Cruz in place of my SB LIve! value and all i can say is that Turtlebeach has their act together. They are in their 3rd series of beta drivers which they say are far from done yet but their package is far better than Live!ware. Their cards have support for EAX 1.0, EAX 2.0 and A3d the same as live!Cards. Also unlike Live! cards they have WORKING AC-3 pass thoughand it doesnt have problems with SMP. OH OH OH and IT DOESNT CRACKLE and has working drivers.
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Right, you reckon the Santa Cruz card is good.
Cool, because my friggin Live!value died last friggin week and I am severely pi55ed.
Only 18 months old and it dies - what a croc of sh1t. I'm now using a 4yo SoundBlaster PNP ISA and it works!!!
Biatch.
PS does anyone know who sells the Santa Cruz or Philips card in Australia? I need a new soundcard - I hate only 2 speakers, must have atleast 4.
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Written on Win2000 using:
PII 300
Aopen AX6B
288mb RAM
Diamond Viper 770 32mb
Matrox Millenium2 2mb
SBLive! Value
20gb Seagate
6gb WDCaviar
1.2gb Seagate
Pioneer 32x CD-R (Slot)
Realtek RTL8029AS 10mbit
MAG 15DLS 15"
Osborne MO117 17"
Using 100% Australian Made recyclable electrons
[This message has not been edited by felix (edited 35 January 3001).]
[This message has been edited by felix (edited 28 March 2001).]
Cool, because my friggin Live!value died last friggin week and I am severely pi55ed.
Only 18 months old and it dies - what a croc of sh1t. I'm now using a 4yo SoundBlaster PNP ISA and it works!!!
Biatch.
PS does anyone know who sells the Santa Cruz or Philips card in Australia? I need a new soundcard - I hate only 2 speakers, must have atleast 4.
------------------
Written on Win2000 using:
PII 300
Aopen AX6B
288mb RAM
Diamond Viper 770 32mb
Matrox Millenium2 2mb
SBLive! Value
20gb Seagate
6gb WDCaviar
1.2gb Seagate
Pioneer 32x CD-R (Slot)
Realtek RTL8029AS 10mbit
MAG 15DLS 15"
Osborne MO117 17"
Using 100% Australian Made recyclable electrons
[This message has not been edited by felix (edited 35 January 3001).]
[This message has been edited by felix (edited 28 March 2001).]
felix, i would check pricewatch.com or one of those sites to see what vendors will ship to you.
Vampyr, the Santa Cruz is everything the Live! isnt, so if the Live! has it then the SC probably has it too but better. Im pretty sure it can do both of those i know it has soundfonts too it. If you want to know more then go to VIAhardware.com and check their FAQ and/or msg boards.
Vampyr, the Santa Cruz is everything the Live! isnt, so if the Live! has it then the SC probably has it too but better. Im pretty sure it can do both of those i know it has soundfonts too it. If you want to know more then go to VIAhardware.com and check their FAQ and/or msg boards.
Does anyone know if the Santa Cruz works solidly in EverQuest.. I know it's an old game, doesn't mean I don't want to play it.. I'm about 98% ready to dump Win2k altogether. The two issues that always held me back were graphics drivers and sound drivers...
Well, I've discovered that if you run the Radeon's latest drivers in NON-ACPI mode (ie. "Standard PC") it runs about on par with Win98 (maybe 5-10% behind). I'm not sure if hardware T&L is working, but with a 1.2ghz Athlon it really doesn't matter.
That leaves sound.. My SBLive has always been a pain in the butt in Win2k.. Switching from a P3 to an Athlon (and Via chipset) has made it slightly more so, but not as bad as one would think (it's main problem seems to be crackling while accessing storage (hd/cd) over it's normal IDE bus.. But I use Raid which uses it's own bus and pretty much stops the problem..
Almost every game I've installed in Win2k has been working great.. Here's the list:
Black and White - flawless
Tribes 2 - fine
Quake 3 - fine
UT - 3d sound distances seemed off, so went back to "No 3dsound" and works fine.
MDK2 - Fine AFAIK (even fixed a win98 graphics glitch with my Radeon).
Serious Sam - fine
Ultima 9 - fine
System Shock 2 - fine (except videos won't play in game.. Gotta work on that one)
That leaves EQ.. EQ runs.. But the sound has problems. 1) distances are off kilter (close sounds far & vice versa) 2) If you hold still sound has a tendency to cut out til you move again.
I would absolutely love to chuck my SBLive out the window (or into one of my other computers) and I'd even be willing to reinstall Win2k if I had to to get a clean driver install for the Santa Cruz.. The thing I have to know is.... WILL IT WORK BETTER THAN THE LIVE IN THESE GAMES????
Thanks in advance,
WGR
Well, I've discovered that if you run the Radeon's latest drivers in NON-ACPI mode (ie. "Standard PC") it runs about on par with Win98 (maybe 5-10% behind). I'm not sure if hardware T&L is working, but with a 1.2ghz Athlon it really doesn't matter.
That leaves sound.. My SBLive has always been a pain in the butt in Win2k.. Switching from a P3 to an Athlon (and Via chipset) has made it slightly more so, but not as bad as one would think (it's main problem seems to be crackling while accessing storage (hd/cd) over it's normal IDE bus.. But I use Raid which uses it's own bus and pretty much stops the problem..
Almost every game I've installed in Win2k has been working great.. Here's the list:
Black and White - flawless
Tribes 2 - fine
Quake 3 - fine
UT - 3d sound distances seemed off, so went back to "No 3dsound" and works fine.
MDK2 - Fine AFAIK (even fixed a win98 graphics glitch with my Radeon).
Serious Sam - fine
Ultima 9 - fine
System Shock 2 - fine (except videos won't play in game.. Gotta work on that one)
That leaves EQ.. EQ runs.. But the sound has problems. 1) distances are off kilter (close sounds far & vice versa) 2) If you hold still sound has a tendency to cut out til you move again.
I would absolutely love to chuck my SBLive out the window (or into one of my other computers) and I'd even be willing to reinstall Win2k if I had to to get a clean driver install for the Santa Cruz.. The thing I have to know is.... WILL IT WORK BETTER THAN THE LIVE IN THESE GAMES????
Thanks in advance,
WGR
I was terribly disappointed in the Radeon's performance--so when I tried it out I pretty much went with the GF2 MX card.
As for the sound card, Ive got a Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo and it works great right off the bad with NO DRIVERS!!
All the complaints about SB Live! cards makes me really glad I didnt get one.
As for the sound card, Ive got a Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo and it works great right off the bad with NO DRIVERS!!
All the complaints about SB Live! cards makes me really glad I didnt get one.
For the life of me I cannot get my Santa Cruz to work with XP... the drivers install but there is no sound. I have heard of some issues some people have been having with XP and the SC but I don't know anything more in depth than that. Also, one of my friends tried getting his SC to work with XP to no avail, so it's not just me that's having this problem. Any ideas?
I dont know what you guys are doing but it has always worked fine for me on 2 different systems so i know its not a hardware problem. All i did was download the SC drivers from the website used the installer and everything went fine. Im able to use the Versajack as well as all the other ports in the card.
I used it on a
ASUS p2b with PIII450@504 and now on my T-bird 1.33 with Abit KT7a both installs were flawless and worked fine.
I used it on a
ASUS p2b with PIII450@504 and now on my T-bird 1.33 with Abit KT7a both installs were flawless and worked fine.
I have to agree with ThC 129 when I tried the Cruz in 2465 it was buzzing with every sound. I just a screen saver with sound and after that it worked great. Yet I have to go back to my Philips Edge in the way it sounds. But if you can buy the Philips Edge just to hear it you can always return it.
"Keep the Faith"
"Keep the Faith"