Sound Blaster Live! Review - Best Sound Card for Windows 98?

[@nezimar]

Sometimes it's surreal watching your channel. With all that pristine vintage hardware, I feel like I'm watching TechTV in 1999.

[@DrewWalton]

It's now 2023 and I still miss TechTV.

[@bamdadkhan]

just wanted to say that i'm so thankful that your channel exists and that you put out in-depth quality content. without this i don't think i'd have half as much fun with retro stuff. also your site is great for finding drivers and short to the point walkthroughs of things. fiddling with this stuff really takes me back to elementary school days and there are things i only now realise. so all in all, a big "thank you" to you for being around, i look forward to your videos about almost anything. i know they will be professional.

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you for the kind words, it means a lot to me and motivates me to keep going :) I have kinda neglected the site a bit, but will try hard to upload resources whenever I do another retro video!

[@drumboy02]

Hey Phil, I'm glad you gave the SB Live! a second chance. Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge and expertise with us!

[@munxcorp]

I like how these cards are really cheap and plentiful. They might be #2 to Aureals Vortex2 when it comes to 3D sound, however the fact that they can be picked up for next to nothing (when Vortex2 goes for no less than $50 these days) makes these cards really attractive.

[@m9078jk3]

I have found Aureal Vortex 2 sound cards as the Turtle Beach Montego II ( AU 8830) for around $13 USD on 2 recent occasions at eBay.They were misrepresented as the Vortex 1 AU8820 models so they were good finds and I picked them up quickly. Just check the close up photos of the sounds cards and you may get lucky. Also I see a listing right now as of Feb 10 2018 on eBay for new condition vortex 2 sound cards with the driver CD too for $20 USD plus shipping. Listing is titled (copy and paste this search for) Aureal Vortex2 Audio Accelerator Board A3D AU8830A2 PCI + CD +manual - NEW

[@philscomputerlab]

m9078jk3 Yea you might have to look a bit harder, but they can still be had for a good price. I got three cards for $15 each last year :)

[@m9078jk3]

Hey Phil I thought of a good idea for a graphics card video. How about the Matrox Millennium of 1995 as it can have 3D acceleration of just one game NASCAR Racing by Papyrus/Sierra and outperformed the rare nVidia nv1 chip (diamond edge 3D cards) at this game. The bright side is that Matrox Millennium cards are inexpensive and fairly easy to find at eBay. So if someone wanted to obtain one of the first 3D accelerator cards they could probably easily obtain this one and the game as well which is common.

[@sinephase]

Yeah I think I got mine for like $28CAD after shipping and it's immaculate.

[@armorgeddon]

I don't think Live! ist #2 to Aureal Vortex2. Yes Aureal can do what Live! can't, but also vice versa.

[@ClassicalMusicOnline]

This card is a legend. I was blown away by the sound quality at that time.

[@arranmc182]

I'm still using one in 2018 still works Perfect in Linux out of the box, still yet to ever listen to a modern sound card that makes me want to upgrade.

[@TheVanillatech]

@@arranmc182 Well sound is directly tied to speaker ability / quality too. If you have £150 speakers or thereabouts, then an SB Live! will be more than adequate to match the quality. If you had a BOSE soundbar or some £600 Sony speaker set up then I would bet a high end Xonar or something similar would sound a lot more attractive! XD Personally, sound is sound. If the rockets go boom, I'm happy. £50 Skullcandy headphones, £90 LG soundbar and a Soundblaster Audigy is all I need. More than enough even. The soundbar was purely for the kids to improve the quality of experience when watching a Disney or Pixar movie! XD

[@zerghydralisk1837]

2020 still i have this in my pc

[@Synthematix]

@@zerghydralisk1837 Keep it in there fella, these cards are incredible.

[@masterkamen371]

I put together a Windows 10 PC from scrap parts for my dad, since his main was an XP build from 20 years ago. Surprise, the onboard sound is burnt out. So I go to my Sound Blaster bin and pull out a nice Live! 5.1. Unfortunately Creative couldn't be bothered to make 64-bit drivers for any of their PCI cards, but to my surprise there is a community made driver for these. Works like a charm. Though now it's kinda stuck in that PC since that's my only Sound Blaster with 64-bit driver support. I want it in my Windows 98 gaming rig so bad...

[@ph1losopher]

Good stuff, Phil. I reproduced this on my PIII Cu 1Ghz system with 98SE. After a lot of problems, I uninstalled the drivers in safe mode, leaving AudioHQ, and reinstalled w/o DOS drivers, then installed VXDs and now things are working. I noticed that the Soundfont loaded in AudioHQ is available even in MS-DOS mode, which means that DOS games which can use General MIDI at 0x300 will have access to Sountfonts, and don't have to use the bland sounding OPL2/3.

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice! Good to hear it's working for you :D

[@retroftw]

"The video we need, but not the video we deserve!" Thanks for the detailed walkthrough and files provided :-D

[@DhinCardoso]

Impressive the load of love and effort you put in your builds and videos. Holy mother tnks for such a good time you gave me with this video

[@Ycreak]

I'm using this card in my main pc with Linux right now! Works like a charm :D Didn't know it was that old already.

[@rebeccaschade3987]

I had the original SB Live! back in the days. It worked fine on my Via MVP3 based motherboard as long as I made sure to have the Via 4-in-1 chipset drivers installed, but this was required for all pci sound cards. Playing Unreal with headphones and EAX was truly spine chilling.

[@boardernut]

12:51 dat pronunciation mate, you nailed it.

[@davidinark]

Just tossed one of these into a CA-10, ran the DOS driver setup, and now have a cool little pure DOS retro machine. Your videos are entertaining and informative as always! (Er, sorry my previous comment was posted as my work account, so I deleted it - haha)

[@masterkamen371]

Unfortunately the OPL3 emulation on these is awful. Accuracy in DOS games was far from the priority. Ideally you'd want to get an SB16 or Pro 2 for older games. Or AWE32/64 which will get you better sound in newer games but keep in mind that most of them also use (mediocre) emulation for OPL3. But It's not _that_ bad. Clones always set new lows in OPL emulation. If your PC only has PCI, it's better than having no sound in DOS.

[@miguelque9102]

I have a CT4670 with an external Digital I/O bracket. It works fine when recording music to my Minidisc player. As for choosing SB Live! cards, I'd say AVIOD SB0200 (Dell OEM), which is based on Ensoniq AudioPCI.

[@armorgeddon]

Nice video! Back in December 98 I ordered a PC with Live! Value but the seller couldn't get one and put the Live! in it without extra charge. I was very happy about that as you can imagine. I even got the retail box. Loved the card and therefor still do (I also still have it), but I was very angry that the advertised 8-channel support was never enabled and even 5.1 was only activated on later Live! models. Watching this video I oberserved the following errors and things you didn't talk about: 1:40 analog output only isn't true. The very first SB Live! came with a daughter board with coaxial and Digital-DIN SPDIF outputs. The Value edition released in parallel also had the connector for the daughter board so it could theoretically be upgraded to have those digital outputs, too. The aud_ext connector isn't just for the front panel connectors but also for the daughterboards which were available from Creative themselves and also Hoontech for example. Muting also the digital sources won't reduce noise I'd say. It would've been interesting to do a VXDWDM comparison on Windows Me, too. I can't say anything about those in terms of performance differences but when I used WDM drivers in Windows Me with my SB Live! I don't remember ever running into sound issues like the one demonstrated on your video where in NFS the sound in the tunnel is garbage. In Quake 3 you could enable A3D with a driver that came out once Creative had bought Aureal. IIRC it gave a least positional surround sound. You didn't mention that there is an important setting when you click on the properties of the Live! in the Windows device manager where you can set the maximum number of channels. IIRC it defaults to just 16 but can be increased to 32. I missed the topic of the SB Link connectors on certain mainboards, but I also do not know if that ever had any relevance to the SB Live!. A very nice feature the SB Live! offered was the so called "Live! Surround". At the time the Live! was current if people had any kind of surround sound speaker systems at home it's amplifiers usually had only stereo inputs or if you had a high end system a Coax SPDIF input. So what "Live! Surround" did was to transform the 4.0 DS3D or EAX sound into a Dolby Surround Pro Logic encoded stereo signal which the user could send to their surround sound amplifiers via analog or digital cable. Thanks to that you'd get surround sound despite not having discrete inputs for 4.0 on your amplifier although because of Dolby Surround's limitations you got no left/right separation on the surround speakers and limited bandwidth on those. If you wanted true 4.0 surround sound you really needed two separate stereo systems or one of those speaker sets specifically made for PC gaming like the ones Creative offered in cooperation with Cambridge SoundWorks where some models even offered digital 4.0 input. CMSS was also great to mix up mono and stereo sources and output them via the connected surround sound speakers. What was also cool about the Live! cards was the very good Linux support although I don't know if those drivers were made by Creative, with Creative's help or purely by engenious enthusiasts. Since the lack of high end games for Linux at the time the Live!'s features were mostly used for HTPC operation like VDR systems etc..

[@TheGreatCodeholio]

On the CD my card came with back in the day there was also a program to play with reverb settings. And yes, I can also confirm some audio distortion was visible in a sound editor on recording if recorded at anything other than 48KHz (something like interpolation artifacts if clipping or near clipping). One of the things I recall about the card is that it made good use of PCI bus mastering to pull audio, even multiple channels, and a brief I found in PDF format mentions support for scatter-gather support because the virtual memory map of the CPU means the audio data is not necessarily contiguous in actual memory.

[@ian_b]

I had two of these in one machine using modified E-MU APS drivers, for music production. Amazing card. Not just a soundcard, it was a synthesizer and sampler too. Absolutely amazing for the time. The only minor downside was the 44.1kHz, which would not stay in sync, if you really wanted that sample rate.

[@urukhai5496]

Do you remember the name of that modified Emu aps?

[@MSDOSProject]

Thanks for this video and the drivers! I just got a win 98 machine with this installed in it so this was exactly what I needed!!!

[@dizzym9554]

I used to use the SB Live a lot back in the day. In addition to being great for games on Windows and DOS, on Linux, back before PulseAudio and ALSA dmix, its strong hardware mixing was the best way to get sound working with multiple audio streams at once without using laggy, broken mixing software like esound. This mattered a lot for Linux-native games at the time which needed memory mapped sound (basically, bit-banging-level access to the card) to sound good, so for example Doom 3 and games that use its engine like Quake 4.

[@GameplayandTalk]

This video was a live saver. Kept getting BSODs on a new Windows 98 build. I thought the last thing that could be wrong was with the sound card.. Nope, it seems the SB Live is what was causing my issues. Went through the installation steps featured in this video and it seems to be operating just fine now. Although.. DOS games when run in Windows don't seem to be recognizing the SB16 emulation, which is an issue I did not have with this card back in the day. Ah well, at least I can use the system now! Thanks for the video.

[@WaybackTECH]

I remember when Windows 2000 started hitting the scene, Creative had a real hard time writing drivers for these SBLive cards. I think by the time they actually figured out how to code for NT, these cards were already on their way out and the Audigy was starting to become the hot stuff. I am not sure they ever did fix all of the bundled software for the Live that came on the CD to work under 2000. That year, 1999 was very chaotic, with these Live cards, Windows 2000 and the new Athlon. You want to talk about a recipe for headaches, lol ya I had it!.

[@techeadache]

Yeah the Audigy SB0090. Hot stuff that people learned to hate due to false advertising. But works great sometimes. I can't complain.

[@solarstrike33]

The Audigy 2 was decent at least.

[@miguelque9102]

A few variants to avoid: CT4790 (PCI 512) - it lacks the SPDIF capability. SB0200 - actually based on Ensoniq AudioPCI, so it's not a true SB Live.

[@Rainbow__cookie]

What about sb0100

[@jolesco]

I also had a SB Live card back in the late 90's to early 2000's. Used to play FastTracker II channels through EAX to get reverb etc. on the tracks. I don't remember having any issues with it, probably due to me using Win XP at the time

[@hinac3]

Thanks for your video! I'm using a Sound Blaster Live ! on my Windows 98 PC (without ISA bus), it's the mostest PCI sound card I have tried on it!

[@1ManWrenching]

I REALLY think this card is awesome. You know, I STILL use these cards, they made OSX drivers for it that work to this day in existing versions of macOS, as long as you have a machine (hackintosh) with PCI ports. I bought these cards back when they were new, got the "Value" version back in the day. The full version was over $150 new, circa 1998/1999. I scored 5 of these gold Live 5.1 cards off eBay about 6 years ago when their value was rock bottom, like $3 each. The original driver package for these was the best, had all sorts of fancy sound effects in Windows 98. Every driver after that removed one feature after another, really sucked.

[@philscomputerlab]

They were surprisingly cheap I must say, looks like they sold a TON of them. But yea, a lot of them are garbage DELL versions.

[@Xeonspec]

I loved sb live. I bought first sb live value card when i was 10 yrs old and i still have it in the box. Not only good for gaming, Many amateur musician bought it for recording and midi works.

[@ricardobarros1090]

I love too 👍

[@patriotbarrow]

I had this exact card back in around 2002-2003. Great piece of hardware

[@neuro_davinci]

I bought one of the SB0060 cards because of this video for 20 quid. I used the custom drivers on Phils website, and it works fantastic. Getting DOS music working on a non ISA PC was becoming a massive headache, and this solved it. Thanks Phil.

[@chatboxguy3363]

Wow, I loved Sound Blaster technology for sound cards. Yeah, they could be ruff and running, but when they got working, I would love them.

[@GiSWiG]

Yeah, a video review of a card that I find in every freaking Dell I acquire! I swear I got 10 of them, most being the Dell models. I got one Platinum I'd like to find the front panel for, specifically the Live Drive II. They are a nice way to add front audio jack for a time when mobos and sound cards did not have specific front panel headphone jack, except every freaking Dell SB Live! with their proprietary jack. I'll have to check out your 52 MINUTE VIDEO later but I'm sure it will be good. I did (and still do) love the SB Live for many a year when they were the card to have. Maybe that's why I still have so many. I need to put them up on ebay, not for profit, I just hate taking good working cards to the local recycling center to be destroyed while other retro builders could use them.

[@BCProgramming]

Unfortunately despite having the Live! Logo, Many Dell OEM SB Live! cards (CT0200 and CT0203 models specifically) Are not actually SB Live! cards, they lack the EMUK10K1 so doesn't have any hardware processing. Instead, it has a heavily lobotomized version, the EMUK10KX, which is practically just straight DSP. EAX/etc is only available via software, which is why you need specific drivers for it (The drivers from the Creative website don't work). I had one from a Dimension 4400 and just ended up tossing it altogether. I doubt they were particularly DOS compatible, either. Supposedly Model CT0220 cards that Dell started shipping a few years later were "full" Live! cards.

[@GiSWiG]

I just mentioned that in another comment. Yeah, Dell did start including better models later on, I think they were 5.1 models. I'd have to look at my stash to be sure (or Google but that's less fun).

[@nathanmilnthorpe11]

Dude your a Legend thanks to you I have a fully working Socket 478 Win 98 and Full Dos Capabilities :-) Was Close to just using DOSBox on win98 but didn't want to do that :-)

[@philscomputerlab]

Thanks man! Always great to hear from others and their projects :D

[@nathanmilnthorpe11]

@@philscomputerlabit's nice to see someone Appreciate old Hardware like I do :-) Let me know if you want the Specs just installed a Geforce FX5500 128mb AGP ( Ordered it Expecting a 5200) so nice upgrade from the radeon 7500le 64mb AGP

[@philscomputerlab]

FX 5500 is a very strong card for 98, no wonder!

[@nathanmilnthorpe11]

@@philscomputerlab its kicking the radeons ass in 3d mark2001 se and testing it with postal 2 also as I noticed it was very choppy with the radeon

[@JunkieXXLde]

Very nice phil! We sold a lot of systems with these cards back then and I clearly remember having a lot of trouble getting them to run properly. Even back then I did not know the difference between wdm and vxd :) if only i had known ... . I can confirm though, that they can run on via based systems quit flawlessly (kt 333 and kt 266a). Another thing worth looking into: I am quit sure that early versions of the Audigy driver CDs could be used to install Live cards too, but dont pin me down on it.

[@philscomputerlab]

I believe that is true, newer Driver CDs in general install the WDM drivers first, and then you got to "downgrade / upgrade" to VXD drivers :)

[@JunkieXXLde]

Your right, my bad. this one ? www.georgebreese.com/net/dl0/vlatency_v020_beta21.exe

[@armorgeddon]

IIRC some mainboard manufacturers updated their BIOSes for mainboards containing the Via 686B so that the latency patch isn't needed on those and it better avoided. I'm pretty sure that was the case with the MSI K7 Master I had back then which had no problems with my SB Live!.

[@lucaspam]

You know, I had this card, the 4.1 live value, for a long, long time. I didn't knew anything about soundfonts or MIDI. I used it a lot in DOS - It was the golden age of emulation and emulators worked great under DOS. This card had some incompatibilities with some emulators. I also had problems with some games, like Ultima 7. But the card was very good with mp3 playing, it made my computer work faster. But I also recall that some DOS games sounded worse than my OPTi 931 ISA card. After experiencing ISA cards, I have mixed feelings about the SB Live. It was a good PCI card, but for old games an AWE 64 sounds better.

[@stealthjoe]

Using SB0100 in windows 98 and working fine. However on restarting it into DOS Mode and then restarting back into Win 98, getting a blue screen stating Math Coprocessor not found. EMUK cannot be loaded. Any ways to fix the issue?

[@SelfIndulgentGamer]

Just got one today. I've never had issues before. I've always had a good time with mine back when new and love all the gimmicky stuff on the disc 😀

[@mmaxeator]

Im no audiophile, but I just disabled onboard CMI8330 ISA audio chip on my retro rig and unleashed SB Live (the OEM DELL SB0220 type with EAX) in WinME. I finnaly found the correct drivers. The sound is at least 5x better even with the crappiest speaker built in the LCD monitor

[@linoxyard]

I managed to install a SBLive and a Vortex 2 in the same system. There are no conflicts for now between the two cards, and I have the best of both standards

[@TheSynrgy1987]

do you just swap the audio cable or feed the sound from one through the other?

[@linoxyard]

TheSynrgy1987 The second one you said. The vortex is the main audio device, sblive feeds in its line input

[@linoxyard]

aussiebear22 Yup

[@armorgeddon]

Thanks for reporting. I'm also considering combining a Live or Audigy card with a Vortex 2.

[@ubbgn]

SB was the card to get because of the compatibility, pretty much all games/apps supported SB!

[@Caleb-fv5fp]

Aureal vortex 2 is my go to for a win98 build. I love the little games that comes with the drivers, the performance and the sound quality!

[@DRCHRISTIANMD]

Hi Phil. In my time with the SB live I found the drivers to be the biggest issue. Probably best too stick to retail as suggested as OEM has an army of model numbers and drivers. Fixed many a customer machine using dial up and downloading multiple drivers too eventually give up and install a different card or actually manage too hit the jackpot.

[@MoltenMetalCasting]

Excellent video! I installed this sound card on my Foxconn 400M01-G-6L Motherboard (with AMD Athlon XP 2500+ processor). I have Windows 98 SE on that machine. I needed a PCI sound card for DOS games (and a joystick port) and it works great with games that can handle expanded memory (Wings of Glory doesn't work). Terminal Velocity runs great with this setup. Unfortunately, the sound drivers don't work in Windows mode but the DOS drivers from your website work great. Right now I am using the integrated sound card for Windows mode and this card (SB 0100) for DOS mode. Thank you.

[@smkie-hf9pz]

SB Live was a must buy for PC builds

[@NightMotorcyclist]

I am one of those people that spoke highly of the card. I have the Creative SoundBlaster Live! Platinum with the breakout box and it was quite helpful at the time as I had a Sony MiniDisc player that utilized optical out for transfers. I bought the card a few months after buying my HP Pavilion Pentium III 800MHz system as the modem/ soundcard was quite bad for all things media related despite being a "media" pc. I loved the gaming bundle the card shipped with to showcase EAX: MDK 2, Thief and Deus Ex. I still have the CDs of those games to this day. Heck, I still have the card and the breakout box.

[@NightMotorcyclist]

I will say that I stopped using the SoundBlaster Live! after building a system using the nForce 1 motherboard as I opted to use the SoundStorm sound system, which was also very good IMO.

[@philscomputerlab]

Nice! Yea it's odd how Creative made EAX open and A3D was propriety technology. The Vortex 2 got Reverb in the latest drivers, but yea, it's nothing like what it sounds like on the Live!

[@solarstrike33]

Doom 3 and FEAR support EAX too, as does Tron 2.0 and Bioshock.

[@HaroldF187]

The SB Live 1024 that I own since 1999 was the most satisfying card that I ever had (compared to its era, of course). No problem with the DOS games I was playing, great for Widows Games (ironically the firs game I played with it was NFS 4 High Stakes and the sound and stereo were mind-blowing for me back then) and an excellent card for multimedia (the music sounded awesome when combined with good speakers). To sum up, I love it and I will always recommend it for Win98 machines where running DOS games is a priority. ;)

[@armorgeddon]

It was the other way around, at first there were SB Live! and SB Live! Value, then came IIRC names like SB Live! Player 1024.

[@tmcclelland47]

I have the Live! 5.1 Digital and I love it, other than the fact that it refuses to work under Windows 10 even with third party drivers.

[@arranmc182]

I'm using a Creative SB Live! CT4780 right now on Windows 10 to listen to this video ;) , still a fantastic card to this day just a shame no drivers for Windows 10 support the Midi/Game port as would be epic to use some retro controllers in Windows 10. If you want to use SB Live cards in modern Windows look up the "KX Drivers", this card also works perfect on Linux out the box and works amazing if your computer has a PCI slot and you are looking for a sound card the Sound Blaster Live! cards are perfect, just watch out as there is two versions of the DELL OEM card you want the SB0220 that has the EMU10K1 chip restored, as was hardware EAX/DirectSound/DirectSound3D acceleration.

[@TheRetarp]

Nice video Phil. I somehow never new that it had General Midi compatibility in DOS games. Now to get Blood and Duke3d working on my Althon XP Win98 system! Edit: I have the CT4870 which is the 4.1 value. Because that's what I had back in the day!

[@armorgeddon]

It's 4.0 actually.

[@RanyBx]

Superb video as usual Phil! I wanted to get this particular for my Pentium 3 and your reviewed cleared so many things for me. I just have one question: how do you connect regular stereo speakers to it, which port to use in the back, software tweaks?

[@philscomputerlab]

Just plug them into the green port!

[@mc42d0]

This routine also works on the sound blaster 512 PCI model SB0150 with the EMU10K1 chip.

[@philscomputerlab]

@@mc42d0 Good to know 😊

[@VGFviktor]

thank you phil for your great reviews

[@philscomputerlab]

Glad you like them!

[@franczakrajsek1689]

There are so many SB Live! models out there! How can I know which are suitable for DOS games? Is the SB0060 OK? What about CT4760 and CT4830?

[@agevenisse3252]

SB0060, CT4760 and CT4830 are all OK (real cards with EMU10K1). Avoid SB020x (Dell OEM, smaller "fake" EMU10K1X chip)

[@franczakrajsek1689]

@@agevenisse3252 thx for answer. But I still don't understand why so many cards, if there are only minor differences between them? I bought SB0100 recently. It works great! But for some reason the sound effects don't work in some apogee games (eg. major stryker). It defaults to PC speaker. The same story is with prince of persia. But the music works fine for most of the time.

[@ricardobarros1090]

@@agevenisse3252 No, SB0220 is a good card. My model is www.amazon.com/Creative-Sound-Blaster-Digital-SB0220/dp/B000Q78M7K and work with official Creative Labs Driver Site driver

[@agevenisse3252]

@@ricardobarros1090 Yes, SB0220 is good, but not the SB020x cards (20 instead of 22). The names of these cards are quite confusing.

[@ricardobarros1090]

@@agevenisse3252 yes 👍

[@jjlostt]

Hi Phil. Thanks a lot for all the info you make accessible trough all your videos. I've been going crazy over a ct4830. I've tried to install it on my IBM Thinkcentre M51 8133 (Pentium 4, windows 98se) and I got this results: VXD only gave me midi on dos games, wdm both fx and midi. MS-Dos drivers load fine at startup, I've got my numbers with the "set" command but the setup doesn´t recognize fx nor music. After hours I went and installed the card into an ASUS A7V8X-MX SE (Also with Windows 98se) . MS-Dos Drivers worked right away. VXD not so much but WDM worked fine. My goal is to have sound on pure dos using the IBM Thinkcentre M51 8133. Any suggestions? All the best from Argentina!

[@philscomputerlab]

@@jjlostt The reality is that DOS compatibility will never be great. It's a bonus but not the strength of this card.

[@itnaklipse1669]

This looks good - i just bought a SB Live PCI card but have been worried if i'd get it to work under DOS which is what i really want with my Win98 machine. Thanks, very informative and instructive. Downloaded the driver packages from your site already :) EDIT: Works without any problems, just like Audigy.

[@GiSWiG]

Now that I have seen the whole video, great job. I do like this one and thanks for all the driver help especially DOS. I do like to revisit 'the good old days of DOS gaming' but not configuring it all (sooo many jumpers). It might be worth noting that the Dell models did not use the real EMU10K1 chip but instead use the EMU10K1X which did not have hardware acceleration; lazy bums.

[@philscomputerlab]

I've added the link to the DOS drivers to the description. Yea there is a SB0200 with a totally different audio chip.

[@FurtherKim667]

In South Korea, this card is still being used in many arcade center, in EZ2AC machine

[@philscomputerlab]

That's cool!

[@nitrax8629]

I currently use a Dell OEM version of this card in my P3 440BX machine - luckily I had the drivers and the motherboard was compatible. It sounds good in most games, though Unreal Engine 1 games sometimes play sound effects at the wrong volume when 3D audio is enabled. I was also surprised about how good the SB16 emulation worked - the only thing that was a bit off was heavy distortion in OpenCubicPlayer (which I use to play module music). Certainly a much better experience than I had trying to set it up on an Athlon XP machine with a KT880 chipset!

[@armorgeddon]

Check if your Dell OEM card is a CT0200 or CT0203 since as Michael Burgwin mentioned in another comment they lack the EMU10K1 processor and therefor do all the fancy stuff on the PC's CPU in software!

[@duje225_rebooted8]

How did he jump at 51:51? I was NEVER EVER able to do that one!

[@georgez8859]

Thanks Phil, I have a few of these Mostly OEM`s with the DELL Connector. I will have to check the model numbers to see what i have. I do have a CD install set so i must have at least one retail card. Thanks again for all the info.

[@PiercedJedi]

I miss the days when there was a good reason to buy an upgraded sound card, I had one of the first SB Live! cards and was a bit sad when I could no longer use my SB Audigy card. I've not purchased a dedicated sound card since :(

[@waynetemplar2183]

PiercedJedi Same here :(

[@leonus3416]

Somebody really needs to review the Diamond Monster Sound MX400 (ESS Canyon3D). Has full EAX 1.0, 2.0 support plus A3D 1.0, hence, its a step above the Live! Would also be interesting to see how good the DOS compatibility is....

[@patchouli3422]

I love the SB Live, but the current card I have is an OEM I got for cheap on ebay. It's been a headache to get it to work properly. I may consider buying a few others to test in my WinME build.

[@canthearu4876]

I have had good luck modifying the .inf files to support the correct PCI ID of the OEM card I got. Then the drivers install just like the retail version.

[@ricardobarros1090]

@@canthearu4876 How? I have SB0220 help me! You Have modify .inf files for my SB0220 ???

[@ricardobarros1090]

@@canthearu4876 YOU ARE ALIVE???

[@canthearu4876]

@@ricardobarros1090 Maybe .... Post the PCI IDs for your card and I'll look into making an inf file for you over the next couple of weeks?

[@bitcoraza5966]

I'm looking to see if it can be used in windows 10, to connect it, I was looking through my old things and found this card, a DSlite and an original nintendo stuffed Ivysaur ... today was a great day

[@Banzeken]

Bought a Sound Blaster Live, model CT4620 (which believe is the very first model), from eBay and put it in a Pentium II 400 (Win98) machine with drivers from the Liveware 3.0 CD. Most EAX games work just fine with it, but I have had some weird issues with certain games on it. I hear the occasional popping noise in early EAX games like Half-Life or Jurassic Park: Trespasser, while games like Requiem: Avenging Angel randomly crashes/freezes mid-game. What can't be denied though is that games like Thief: The Dark Project, Thief 2: The Metal Age and System Shock 2 all sound wonderful on it.

[@ajax700]

Any decent soundcard sounds fantastic on TDP, T2 and SS2 excellent FX + soundtracks. Come on... this has the merit of killing the technically better and cheaper aureal. Also bad drivers (bloated, invasive, unprecedented storage use), and rear DAC better than front DAC.

[@Banzeken]

Nope. You don't get reverb on any other card of that time. "killing the technically better and cheaper aureal" Are you people *still* upset about it after all of these years? Why can't you just relax and enjoy old sound cards without resorting to tribalism? What a waste of time.

[@ajax700]

​@@Banzeken "Nope. You don't get reverb on any other card of that time." You get reverb on many non-creative soundcards since. Also there are software solutions, that I didn't test. "Are you people still upset about it after all of these years?" I'm not upset. Can I be entitled to have my own opinion? Maybe we both can learn something from this exchange. "Why can't you just relax and enjoy old sound cards without resorting to tribalism?" I'm relaxed, and I don't belong to any souncard tribe. I experienced creative marketing lies: * sb 16 backwards compatibility, and high quality * sb live DOS backwards compatibility (lacking and incomplete) and high quality (using worse quality DACs, and the main front DAC is the lesser quality one). I don't like Creative perverse aggressive maneuvers against its consumers: * not releasing drivers for new OSs for not-that-old soundcards * persecution of developers of patches or improved drivers. Etc, etc, etc. Creative killed Adlib, Aureal, nvidia SoundStorm. And probably many more. They are a parasite technology company. With very good marketing! * The technology of sounblaster cards up to sb16 was Yamaha chips. * Soundfont technology is from E-mu, purchased in 1993. * They couldn't develop PCI soundcards, so they purchased ensoniq in 1998. * In 2003 they purchased Sensaura only in to destroy nvidia soundstorm competition at excellent (low) price. With this they also blocked Sensaura technology licensing to competitors: ESS Technology, Crystal Semiconductor/Cirrus Logic, Yamaha; (nvidia,) Analog Devices, VIA Technologies and C-Media soundcards. Also remember: "A3D uses a subset of the actual in-game 3D world data to accurately model the location of both direct (A3Dspace) and reflected (A3Dverb) sound streams (A3D 2.0 can perform up to 60 first-order reflections). EAX 1.0, the competing technology at the time promoted by Creative Labs, simulated the environment with an adjustable reverb-it didn't calculate any actual reflections off the 3D surfaces." Creative has constantly exterminated even ¬possible¬ competition. Today's stagnant audio technology is probably because of that.

[@Banzeken]

I have read all of those arguments before and I (respectfully) don't care if you dislike Creative. What confused me was when you started going on about how unfair it was that Aureal went out of business thanks to Creative because I said I owned a SB Live and that the Live sounded nice in a few select games I mentioned (which it does, because EAX added much needed atmosphere with its reverb which A3D *didn't* have in '98/'99, if ever). I have nothing personal against you nor anyone who likes A3D cards, but I'm really not sure why you chose to tell me all of this. If anything, I need some evidence of reverb on A3D cards existing because I have yet to find footage/audio of it. Was that A3D 3.0 only or is it part of the EAX support too?

[@miladesn]

Can cards like these be used in WIndows 10? There are so many ancient but very high end creative cards on ebay for dirt cheap. I have the PC with PCI, I just don't know if there is a driver that works. The specs on these cards are easily audiophil(TM) approved so you could get something really awesome driving your headphones for like $10. I am talking about X-Fi cards specifically.

[@kjrchannel1480]

For the sake of keeping these alive. For those who aren't afraid of flashing eeproms. On these boards U14 is where the board ID lives. Years ago I obtained an OEM 5.1 version. I then found info on retail versus their Oem counterparts. Someone wrote software for flashing those eeproms using a parallel port. It worked. I could then use retail drivers on the OEM card. Although minus the some functionality from uninstalled options. If you go with the OEM driver route you can use drivers within that series. They will also be just enough to make it work. These cards in my observation reproduce accurate sounds for Ultima games. Many years ago people wanted a full retail card, but didn't want to pay for it. Don't be afraid to use the 4.1 versions either if you want to use the digital out. Aside from the output decoding they are the same. They can also be used in Win7 with the KXproject.

[@panopolis8051]

do you have any more info on this?

[@angel604cry]

Latest KX Project drivers work fine even on Win10.

[@link238_]

oh god yes, use to play raptor a ton as a kid but i forgot what it was called recently. hell yeah

[@habibal-faraj8586]

I had soundblaster live in my celeron 300 pc. It was great, and I was astonished by its realtime sound effects. As a win98 sound card it was one of the best in terms of the software it comes with. By the way, OEM soudblaster live cards, in some cases, are not real soundblaster cards, because some of them come with a less capable chip. If you are out for a soundblaster live, always make sure it has the EMU10K1chip.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea good point. Best to double check the actual chip on the card. I hate how eBay sellers don't include a driver CD usually and don't tell you if it's OEM or Retail.

[@Twintania]

Just got this sound card for my Dell Dimension 4100 for $5 in a parts bin at my local PC repair shop. Took a long while to get it working under Windows 2000 (now time for 98se) almost gave up and went to a Audigy 2 zs but wanted this one for its dos cmpatabillity and the game port. I know the game port part might sound a bit silly but this PC is very minimalistic in terms of ports on the back

[@BaumInventions]

When i updated to a Soundblaster Audigy 2zs i already was running windows XP. In all PCs before that i used my old Aztech ISA Soundcard. I could not afford a real Soundblaster back in the days and i had to buy a Aztech Clone card. I was really jealous when a friend of mine got a soundblaster AWE64 Gold. It sounded so realistic. had so many connectors and was GOLD! OMG a golden Soundcard. That was a crazy time :D

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

I was able to get this working on a socket 462 motherboard with SiS chipset. I did have to move to a different PCI slot and a different IRQ through Device Manger. I was getting A IRQ conflict because setup decided to setup the SB16 emulation on IRQ 10, DMA 3 and 7. After setting it to 7 (if I recall), DMA 1 and 3, it worked fine. The conflict was producing a “windows protection error” on boot up. That was in Windows 98 se. In Real-Dos mode, I used your method with Livedos and worked fine just like your video.

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

I also turned off all the stuff on the motherboard I/O that I wasn’t gonna use to free up some IRQs. Only thing working is the mouse/keyboard setup. The USBs were 1.0 so I turned them off and used the NEC USB 2.0 card from one of your other videos.

[@adam6759]

Hi Phil, Might you be able to try Blake Stone please? Got the SB0060 and all games I have tried work perfectly in windows but Blake Stone has the occasional weird sound screams/distortions. What is the difference between the SB0060 and SB0100? Thankyou

[@MrKsoft]

Whoa, I never actually realized that the Lives ACTUALLY emulate FM for DOS. Grew up with an AudioPCI and assumed that Creative just kept using the same garbage "map GM instruments to FM" code. It's not great... but way better than I expected.

[@philscomputerlab]

Yea it's much better than how the AudioPCI did it :)

[@samthemultimediaman]

I wish there was a program that let you tune and change the FM instruments, so much potential that was wasted with the original instruments.

[@UnphasedHaplotype]

Hya, great video and guide. Would you consider adding some DOS Star Wars games (Dark Forces, Tie Fighter, etc) to your testing portfolio? These are popular and do tend to have some issues with SB Live, especially on faster systems (P4 for example) especially when using general midi. Interested in your take on this.

[@philscomputerlab]

These games trip copyright issues, so I avoid them usually :)

[@dallesamllhals9161]

STAR WARS® = Disney™ NO ONE wants to fight the strongest EMPIRE in these times!? ;-P

[@Fizzacles]

How come almost nobody remembers the sound/music demo that was included with the early Live! CD? (Not the EAX one for games) My dad used to blast it at full volume on his DIY 5.1 setup and go crazy. Hearing it just brings so much nostalgia. It has two full-feature tracks, one of them was like african kind that was calm, but the other one on the volcano screenshot would be some sort of electronic trance track, I can't really describe it. It sounded really cool though. I haven't found any source for those on the Internet, I have the Live! CD, but good luck running the software in on anything else but a WIN98 era PC because of incompatibilites. The ones that I did see on YT are completely different Africa and Bloodwar sound nothing like what I remember. EDIT: FOUND IT! It's here! watch?v=PXMMSWE6OU4 But the soundfont is off for some reason, the Bloodwar track sounds different and doesn't seem to have any grittiness like I remember. Also, remember game installers that would have music and pretty pictures of gameplay and what not. Now installing a game is boring. I don't know which is my favorite, maybe the one from Halo and MechCommander 2.

[@_Areknames_]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/homwfoaNepuCi5Y check maybe here you find the demos

[@NiGhtPiSH]

Just got one for $5. I think it will fit my Coppermine Celeron build quite nicely.

[@SONYPVM]

AH! I have the exact same model, good tips on the drivers!

[@SONYPVM]

also will you host these drivers on your website?

[@philscomputerlab]

Look for Vogons driver site, they have all the CDs uploaded!

[@SONYPVM]

Thanks Phil, found em!

[@Keduce22]

There's actually a couple chipset versions .... I had the EMU10K2 but my dad had the EMU10K1. Some subtle differences and software incompatibilities.

[@armorgeddon]

EMU10K2 was the chip on Audigy cards. EMU10K1 was on the Live! cards.

[@plasmar1]

if I recall correctly part of the reason why people are polar about this sound card is that around the time Creative got taken to court for some methods they used to give priority to their sound card over other devices, coupled with it being a high bandwidth pci device or similar(not the only device to have this problem of that era); people were getting hit with data corruption etc due to this... relates in part to the MVP3 K6 chipset which I was surprised it appears you like it for retro gaming; always had problems with that generation of hardware outside of the Intel stuff.... I wouldn't doubt some people had no issues as I had no issues with Windows ME at the time it was released:P

[@Leeki85]

I had that card back in the day and I was simply good. EAX support was great and was available in every game. DOS compatibility was rather poor and heavily limited. For example FM synth only worked for me when Windows 98 was running. In DOS Mode only sound blaster PCM worked and not in every game. I find Sound Blaster X-FI a way superior card. It runs great in Windows XP and is compatible with every EAX version ever made. X-FI has also good ASIO implementation for low latency sound. Creative cards are so good, that they are even recommended for music composers as a entry level hardware. As for SB Live, it got low latency only in MIDI output, but better that than nothing. From todays perspective it's hard to recommend those cards for retro PCs. For DOS gaming you better of with any motherboard with ISA slot and ISA music card. For Windows gaming, Windows XP + SB X-FI is ultimate setup. You can even use modern machines that still support this system. Just get a soundcard that has EAX support in XP.

[@huberthans4312]

In Windows 10, an X-FI wont work as it should. Its only a DAC with slow software stacks. With the dawn of Windows Vista, and the DRM-Mafia cutting Microsofts balls off to secure the audio data within the OS to gain Bluray-Compatibility, such cards are a thing of the past. EAX is not emulated, if you use Alchemy and the game supports it. Its native and sounds almost as good as on XP. (But not as good) Problem is: If you use Vista or newer, the sound quality of the X-FI is compromised, and you have no chance to pull this card to its full potential. The Mixer with its high quality Sample rate conversion is not used. The Software Audio Mixer is used. Even though, its high quality, its not as good as the hardware mixer of the X-FI. Worse: Its low quality bandpass cuts off high frequencys and low frequencys in a bad shape. You can hear it cleary. And the X-FIs are not compatible with the Windows 8/ Windows 10 audio stack. There, the sound quality is compromised even further. If you are using a X-FI Titanium, the sound is blurry and dull. And positional audio is rather poor, while using more CPU-Power than native Windows 8/ 10 compatible sound cards. This affects Alchemy-compatible games. because the audio from the game must pass the shitty windows mixer. The comparison is very easy if you look at the windows audio endpoint service. Its eating up double the amount of CPU cycles than my X7 does, at the same 96Khz 24Bit 5.1 setting. Due to the fact that the Creative X7 is Windows 8/ Windows 10 compliant, the audio stack does not compromise audio quality. The X7 can go as low as 10Hz up to above 30KHz without problems. The Ultrasonic range will hurt your ears, but the X7 does it. The X-FI, due to its incompatibilitys is bound to 20Hz to 20KHz with hearable cutoff bandpass filtering. (Which affects audio clarity and positional audio greatly) As for now, im using the digital output of my Fatality Titanium for Directsound/ OpenAL games. For the rest, the X7 is the better choice. EAX on the X7 is good, but not perfect.

[@okaravan]

Raw compute performance of X-FI is comparable to one core of a modern desktop CPU, so games can have all of EAX features in software inside the game engine. Steam Audio library tries to do it, and modern game engines have something comparable for this purpose.

[@ajax700]

@@huberthans4312 Are you a creative employee? haha. Interesting information though, (if it's accurate).

[@huberthans4312]

@@ajax700 No, im not. But im interested in such hardware since the mid-90s

[@marioman971]

Got an SB0100 with a Radeon 9800 Pro for $20 a while back. Been using the Sound Blaster with my IBM PC 300PL and it's truly awesome. You mentioned it has a PC speaker output, though I never got it to work really at all? Maybe it's just drivers. I'll have to look at that sometime.

[@philscomputerlab]

PC Speaker is an input. You connect the PC speaker headers to the sound card. So all the PC speaker beeps will then come out of the live. If you're missing mixer sliders for this, you can enable some sliders in the sound options.

[@marioman971]

PhilsComputerLab ah that would make more sense

[@Rivalgamesbg]

I'm currently using this card on Windows 10 with kX drivers. It has a native ASIO driver and gives me very low latency when playing my guitar.

[@DECTech]

Could you upload a rip of the driver CD somewhere? I know i can find the drivers by themselves, but I would like to have a copy of the drive CD.

[@philscomputerlab]

They are available on the VOGONS driver site!

[@jimjamz.]

@@philscomputerlab Which version are you using on vogonsdrivers? There are many versions on there. Please provide a link here, or better yet, in the description.

[@jimjamz.]

This one I presume?: www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=805

[@rhuwyn]

I've never had any issues with any of the SBLives that I've ever owned except somtimes challenges finding the right driver. But as you said for A3D compatible titles using headphones there is absolutely nothing like a Vortex 2.

[@BandanazX]

I just found one of these at work today. It's an OEM version. I need to learn more about sound fonts, and stuff now.

[@shiveringisles3509]

how to tell if it's an OEM version?

[@BandanazX]

Well, this one came from a Dell computer is how I know it is OEM.

[@IronwingTechHaven]

So, you showcase a lot of older hardware like this, but I'm wondering what the best way to track down the manufacturing date of PC hardware is. I'm having a tough time with many components. Like this one for example, when was it made?

[@KARAOTI23]

Great review! So which of the PCI Sounblaster cards is better for DOS? The Live! or the CT4810?

[@sirdrinksalottrenchhugger4041]

Hi Phil, at 9:00 you mention that a3D can't be enabled. I've noticed this in a few of your sound card reviews. However, have you looked into using Aureal's a2d "drivers" which were supposed to bring a3d to non-Aureal cards? Does that work at all?

[@philscomputerlab]

AFAIK that's just a wrapper. I don't think it's worth looking into to be honest. If you care about A3D, just get a Vortex 2 :)

[@sirdrinksalottrenchhugger4041]

Thanks! I just had to try those a2d support files on my soundcards. SB16 Vibra ISA was a bust - any a3d app wouldn't start, q3 actually locked up the computer. On the SB Live 4670 Value, however, the A3D demos work fine (except for Rooms). For instance, in Player and Race, you can clearly hear that both elevation and occlusions work. A3D can be enabled in Q3, but it sounds funny - probably because of the 3.12 a3dapi.dll. After replacing that with 2.25, A3d can no longer be activated in Q3.

[@va4cqd]

i used a sb0100 from early 02 until 09 when i switched to win 7 and there were no driver support for it

[@miguelque9102]

Try kX driver package for SB Live cards.

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

I finally got a Live card working in Duke3D/Quake 1 in Windows 98. I had originally bought it for my first windows 98 build but never could get it working right. I recently picked up another slot 1 motherboard and figured I mess around with it. This time I decide to use different drivers off vogon. I tested out the drivers off one of the later Forceware CD’s. The Duke3D setup through the command prompt in windows 98 went smooth. I proceeded to play for a few minutes and no problem whatsoever. Quake1 was also working too. I believe the model I have is a CT4670??? I’m probably gonna try to do the real-dos stuff tomorrow. Fingers-crossed

[@mOddEdLiKeHeLL]

Sorry meant “Liveware”

[@starsiegeplayer]

I loved my Soundblaster Live! card. The only problem I had was the DOS drivers simply would not work. I had done research and apparently they relied on something on the motherboards that some manufacturers (like mine) didn't support.

[@ocworkshop]

With the SB Live! dos drivers you provided Doom works perfectly fine, however Heretic crashes and reboots the whole system as soon as I move the mouse. Weird, because it also uses the Doom engine. I'd say it is some conflict between the cute mouse driver and this livedos driver, as when the driver isn't loaded, it works perfectly, also with keyboard only it is fine.

[@succuvamp_anna]

Ever thought about using "Black MIDIs" for benchmarking soundcards? I think that would be a good way to stress a card.

[@williamwilliam9993]

When you install a creative soundcard driver the sound scheme on windows will changed to a creative technology sound scheme

[@ctiborkoza8944]

Phil hello, great video review on SB0100, I own SB0060 but my personal opinion is that under W98 it's a great card but for MS-Dos it doesn't work very well especially some MS-DOS game titles have conflicts either the sound doesn't work or restarts the PC of course also chipset the Aladdin V set for the Super 7 socket has a lot of problems with graphics card support and conflicts with Isa devices, it is definitely best to use the VIA chipset for SS7. I prefer ISA sound cards ESS 1688/1868, Yamaha OPL YMF718-S together with DreamBlaster X2GS or PCI sound cards from Yamaha XG or ESS have great support for Ms-Dos. I also own the Legend Gravis Ultrasound MAX rev 1.8 beautiful sound, only the compatibility in games and problems with W98 drivers will train even an experienced person in the IT world. I think that you should set up a forum on your website, you would get suggestions for at least new videos for youtube. or some work email if a collector wants to send you some great hardware. Thank you for making great videos for our community about PC retro hardware, which we still remember with nostalgia or own at home. I acknowledge and put my hat down before your work on KZbin

[@Bige4u]

Im using this same card in a P3 1400s/asus tusl2-c/256mb pc133 cl2/gf3 ti500 system and the sound is quite nifty.... so color me impressed.

[@ching-chenhuang8119]

Back then I bought SB Live Value, which only supported 4-channel speakers, cost me quite a fortune, but it worth it.

[@armorgeddon]

The full SB Live! also only ever did 4.0 despite what was being advertised (except Dolby Digital and DTS which you could output via the daughterboard, those could be 5.1 of course). Only later Live! models did up to 5.1.

[@argniests5357]

Will the Creative SB Live cards work with Hyper3d pinball in DOS mode (from the Windows 98 machine). That game requires EMM386. I have seen your DOS starter pack with a lot of different boot up options, and I wondered if using that, and choose an option for EMM386,,,,and then let it boot into the DOS mode and run the Hyper 3d pinball. Hyper3d pinball also requires the CD to be in the drive, since its playing some music during the game play using the CDROM drive.

[@druout1944]

I definitely do not miss the hot garbage that was SB card dependency for W98.

[@holgerwikingsen713]

If you need to test more MIDIs then I recommend playing Silvercreek's Hardwood Solitaire II. I watched (and heard) this video using a new pair of Sleek Audio One headphones I received as a gift. The sound is amazing. Still have that SB Live! 5.1 along with a Voodoo 5. Good soundcard.

[@philscomputerlab]

I wanted to record digitally, but none of my modern sound cards can record COAX, they only do optical.

[@Lady_Zenith]

When it comes to SB-live and the chipset compatibility, if you go the way of WDM it works everywhere. The issues start with VXD (and its forced SB16 emulation under win). The reason is that live needs that both the chipset and bios support ISA DMA and IRQ calls (no matter if they are physically present on the board). So in all boards with ISA, I never had any issue. (but on those boards you are better off running ISA SB card for retro gaming, unless you are really that in to A3D or EAX effects). As it comes to the modern fichpsets, live breaks around the KT333 era. When it comes to Intel it works great on all the 800 series one, including the 865 boards that support Core2duo. It does not work on the 900 PCI-E series. On VIA, It works fine up to KT333, (tested on MSI KT3 ultra), I did nto test VIa K8 chipsets, but the one on Asrock dual VSTA does nto work. On SIS chipsets it worked fine on SIS645, but it was bios dependent. For example on Asus 645 board = 0 issues. On MSI 645 board it worked only when I disabled ACPI in the bios. On ECS P4S5A.... no chance, not working. As it comes to Nforce compatibility, no chance, does not work with any Nforce chipset. The 2 most modern systems where I use SB live is first what I call "the CPU overkill" aka GA-8I865GME-775-RH with C2D E6700. And the second one is dual Xeon Gallatin 3,2Ghz on Tyan Thunder i7505 S2665 where I have Voodoo5 5500 MAC in PCI ( V5 when plugged to PCI-X slot can run on 66mhz PCI bus clock, doubling the bus bandwidth and increasing geometry performance of the GPU), and in AGP there is HD3850 and it serves as dual win98/XP retro machine.

[@nitrax8629]

This must be why I had absolute hell setting up this card on my Athlon XP machine with a KT880 chipset. VXD drivers would loop the first piece of audio played, and the DOS drivers didn't work as my motherboard couldn't run EMM386 (non-standard memory mapping). I could only get WDM drivers working, even that was a chore.

[@Lady_Zenith]

Basically if you board has any compatibility issues with EMM386, do not even try SB live under win98, or any other SB including the acquired ensoniq audio series. Aaand pretty much any other PCI card with any hope of making DOS sound to work. The only card that is known to work even when the platform does not support EMM386 and ISA IRQ/DMA calls is the aureal vortex 2, nothing else. As it comes to KT880 its not a good choice for retro setup. It lacks the legacy compatibility of the old VIA chipsets and pure performance wise you would still be better off with Nforce2 or rather just go to K8 platform. The era starting with KT400 and ending with the slow disappearance and insignificance of VIA was the decline of their chipsets. Pretty much after KT333 only problems and negatives piled. First KT400 - useless AGP8x, only brought compatibility issues and made it impossible to use old 1x and 2x cards. KT600 was a disaster later, incompatible with many Radeon cards unless you switched to AGP4x and FW off, sata controller that worked correctly only with period correct Sata1 drives and inferior performance compared to Nforce 2 nailed it. KT880 is just KT600 with dual channel, and the later K8 chipsets were all inferior to Nforce counterparts, the compatibility issues continued, later joined by PCI-E (VIA boards with PCI-E 1.0 have issues with 2.0 and later cards), the K8 chipsets had issues with PCI/AGP/PCI-E lock aka terrible FSB overclock, and on Intel platform the chipsets just performed sub-par. VIA had its time to shine only briefly on the K6 and K7 platform and that's only cause there were no alternatives at the time. Before and after they were always meh and overall I hold strong dislike towards VIA.

[@0525ohhwell]

I would have to agree about the KT333 being probably the last VIA to pick up. I have 2 of those MSI boards as they are pretty cheap still and hold up well.