Waterpolo8's Full Review: Rio Diamond Monster Sound MX300
It was about the middle of May 99 when I started to build my computer. I ask one of my friends, who is a very competent computer person, what he recommends as far as sound cards go. He told me about the MX300 and how he has it and his works great. So, along with the price and me taking his word for it, I bought it. Boy that was a MISTAKE!!!!
The price is a warning to not purchase it. You get what you pay for, $30 worth. Technical support is all but non-existent from diamond, your on your own if you buy this card. While this product provide great features, however, installation is a major head ache and pain with this card. Along with many others.
Diamond has major issues. First off, only about half of the existing joysticks work with it, and many games do not work with it. I have been playing several games and have been forced to turn the sound off for them to work properly.(eg. Half-Life, Unreal Tournament) and it is horrible with DVD, the sound quality is just bad.
Secondly, I bought this card brand new in May 99, and you would think that they would have released proper drivers by now. Diamond/S3 have decided that this card which has only been available for less than a year and a half is an "end of line" product which no longer warrents driver updates. If you want the latest drivers for this card you have to use unsupported reference drivers from aureal. I am running Windows 2000 now and, when I went to the Diamond website, they didn't have drivers for it. At the website it says that it works in Windows 2000, and that I should use Vortex2, which are drivers built into the OS. WRONG! Vortex2 does NOT even exist in Windows 2000.
Thirdly, my computer NEVER detects the sound card when i boot up, unless i have just physically plugged it into the pci slot and booted up the computer, and that's a pain to do every time I want to boot up.
It was a great card for listening to MP3's, on a cheap speaker set-up, when the card did work. I recently got some nice Cambridge Soundworks Dolby Digital Speakers. This card just doesn't cut it anymore for me. With no Coaxial S/PDIF out for AC3 and then also no DIN for a digital speaker connection it just doesn't have the features. Sure it may have A3D 2.0/3.0 and EAX support in the new drivers but 3D sound on this card brings performance down tremendously even on the beefiest rigs today. My advice is to go with one of the Sound Blaster Live! cards. That is what I'm going to buy in a couple of days.
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