Great card, but with a few exceptions that can be glaring...
Written: Nov 21 '00 (Updated Nov 21 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: great sound, many features for gaming
Cons: sometimes difficult installation and maintenance
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| unixweb's Full Review: Turtle Beach Montego II Quadzilla |
I bought this card for two reasons: price and Turtle Beach's reputation and history of producing excellent sound cards. I have tried personally or at least installed for others numerous sound cards during the past 7 years. I have 21 years of computer experience, so I was prepared for anything. The reviews I read of the Quadzilla said installation was simple, however, and the reader would not be disappointed with the card's performance.
I brought the card home and installation was initially relatively simple, though my onboard SiS chipset sound system made installation less than a snap, even though it had been disabled in BIOS. The drivers for Quadzilla and its game port would not install unless I also disabled the SiS drivers in Windows 98 itself as well. If I removed them from Windows they were simply re-detected upon next boot. Anyway, once the drivers and the card itself were installed, I installed the game which shipped with the card. I admit I was amazed by performance so I was more than happy despite the problems with installation. However, with daily use of my PC I noticed the Quadzilla tried to "relocate" itself (change IRQ at random), and would therefore lose all functionality, especially if the machine froze up or blue-screened. I had to remove and reinstall the drivers each time before the card would be detected again. This happened to me probably 30 times altogether.
I also use UNIX in my work and I run Linux Mandrake at home, dual-booted with 98. If you have ANY notion of ever running another OS, do NOT purchase the Quadzilla. It is not supported by any flavor of Linux, at least not as of this writing. I am on my second CPU and motherboard as well, so they can't be to blame. I presently have a Microstar KA7T Pro with an Athlon 800, and 160 megs of SDRAM.
In short, if your hardware configuration works well with Quadzilla, consider yourself lucky and know that you have a great sound card. If, however, you have something with which Quadzilla is not happy, you may like I did end up reverting back to something like an onboard chipset or another card altogether. Compatibility and ease of use are more important to me than absolute top-notch performance. If it won't install correctly, or stay installed, I don't care how well it works.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 50.00
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Epinions.com ID:
unixweb
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Reviews written: 1
Trusted by: 0 members
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