backwoodsbum's Full Review: Rio Diamond Monster Sound MX300
When I was building a new system a couple of years ago there were only two choices in the highend soundcard market, the Creative Lab Soundblaster Live and the Diamond MX300. I've always found myself rooting for underdogs, so since the Soundblaster cards dominated the market I chose the Diamond instead. I've always found Diamond products to be reliable performers and this card is no exception. I bought the card at a computer show and paid a fraction of the cost of a Soundblaster Live so the monetary savings alone would be enough for me to recommend this card, but that is far from the only thing that makes this card a winner. The MX300 uses Aureal's A3D technology to produce some incredible sound effects when used with a high quality multiple speaker setup. The included demos illustrate the 3 dimensional effect dramatically. Since I'm not a hard core gamer, this was fun, but not as important as the overall sound quality. I spend a lot of time on the computer and I usually have some MP3's or a CD playing. The MX300 sounds so good that (again with good speakers or headphones) it can rival some home stereo systems. I recently built a new system and this card was one of the few things I kept out of my old system. Even though there are newer (and possibly better) cards available now, the MX300 was such a good card that I saw no reason to spend the money on a new card.
Now that I have raved about how good the MX300 is, it's time for me to temper that optimism with a few negative factors. First and foremost, this card can be a little difficult to install on some machines. In keeping with my love of the underdog, I tend to favor PC's built around AMD processors. The first machine this card was installed in had an AMD K6-2 400 processor and it currently resides in a pc with an AMD Duron 650 (overclocked to 950). Installation in both of these machines was a little tricky. If you plan on using the MX300 in an AMD based machine, especially one using the VIA chipset on the motherboard, make sure you have the latest drivers for not only the sound card, but also for the motherboard. The latest reference drivers for the sound card can be found here:
http://www.vortexofsound.com/drivers/drivers.htm
The only way I could get this card to work on my new system was to use the reference drivers instead of the drivers that came with the card. There are quite a few references on the web about problems associated with the MX300 and AMD based systems, specifically those with ABIT KT7 motherboards. This card can be used in those systems, but the trouble required to successfully use this card in such systems may be more trouble than most people want to go to.
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