SOUND CARD  review

S3 Monster Sound MX400

Rating: Benchmark Test Results Manufacturer: S3 San Jose CA, USA 800-468-5846 408-325-7408 (fax) Requirements: Note: Free PCI 2.1-compliant slot and speakers or headphones for audio output. Tech Support: 408-325-7100 Print this page

01/26/2000

The MX400 has been a long time in coming. Originally slated for late fall of last year, it missed the lucrative Christmas season but now emerges from the doldrums of winter priced at a startling $79.95. For your eighty bucks you get not only the card but also a seven-level version of Slave Zero, a trial (software unlockable) version of Demolition Racer, a slew of MP3 playback tools (pick your favorite from among Winamp, Rioport Manager, Real Jukebox, and Liquid Player), Mixman Studio FX, and Zoran's Software DVD player.

The MX400 uses the ESS Canyon3D audio processor. While the chip is certainly capable, it's the plethora of API support that makes this card an audio jack-of-all-trades. The card supports A3D 1.0, EAX 1.0, EAX 2.0, I3DL2 (a public standard closely related to EAX 2.0), DirectSound, and DirectSound3D. The card also supports Sensaura's Multidrive technology. Sensaura's technology exists within DirectSound3D and supports full HRTF (head-related transfer functions) through all four speakers. There's also support in the hardware for 48 audio streams, though few games actually use that many.

The hardware itself is unassuming. There are two internal MPC-style connectors, one for analog CD audio and one for modem or auxiliary use. There's also a two-pin connector for PC speaker use if you want to connect that up. Also, there's a connector on the back of the board for future expansion - Diamond's been talking about an MP3 add-on that will actually do hardware decode of MP3 streams (using the same engine as in its popular RIO player). There are two buffered audio output ports (which support four speakers for positional gaming audio), a microphone input port, and a line in. There's also a standard coax S/PDIF output port. There is no provision for S/PDIF input, either externally or internally.

I was intrigued when I noticed Unreal Tournament frame rates posted directly on the side of the box, supposedly besting both the Sound Blaster Live and the Aureal SQ2500. Since our test bed normally has a Sound Blaster Live in it, I thought I'd do a little head-to-head testing, using Unreal Tournament (with the demo recording that's part of 3D GameGauge 2.5) and Ziff-Davis' Audio WinBench 99.

Before I launch into the performance tests, I'd like to note that I'd had extensive hands-on with a previous card using the Canyon3D, the TerraTec DMX board. Early last fall, the TerraTec drivers demonstrated very high CPU utilization numbers for the Canyon3D. I was curious to see if the driver writers had improved the situation.

The good news is that in Audio WinBench 99, the Canyon3D's latest driver set is much less CPU intensive. The bad news is that it hasn't really surpassed the Sound Blaster Live. The CPU utilization numbers from Audio WinBench are clearly higher than the SB Live. Note, however, that even the 32-voice 44.1KHz DirectSound3D streaming test is still only around 5 percent, but that's higher than the 3.4 percent of the Sound Blaster Live. At 16 voices, the result is nearly twice as high (3.5 percent versus 1.79 percent). These numbers are all pretty low, and the card is clearly more efficient now than last fall.

Then I turned to Unreal Tournament. We use the publicly released 3.48 demo of Unreal Tournament for most of our testing. I checked off the "3D audio support" checkbox in the preferences and ran it that way with both sound cards. With the Sound Blaster Live in the system, the UT demo posted a shade under 51fps. Popping in the MX400 yielded an average rate of 47.2fps. Epic has made some improvements to the 3D audio in patches released for the retail version, so the frame rate may improve with the real game. Nonetheless, the MX400 clearly has a greater impact on game performance than the Sound Blaster Live.

On the other hand, you also get more. While the MX400 doesn't sound quite as robust with 3D audio through two speakers as a Vortex2 board, it's quite good with four speakers - certainly on a par with an SQ2500 or Sound Blaster Live.

The Zoran SoftDVD player is a somewhat minimalist player, but it does down-mix to four channels (either using "surround" mode or DirectSound3D) if you've got four speakers attached (as opposed to merely two). There's also an S/PDIF output that will send a Dolby Digital stream directly to a hardware Dolby Digital decoder, but there's no onboard hardware decoder.

The software controls are pretty limited. You can switch between two- and four-speaker support (and test them) and choose a 2MB or 4MB downloadable MIDI patch set. The 4MB MIDI patch set sounds fairly good though not quite up to the Sound Blaster Live's patch set. Initially, I had problems getting the acoustic piano patch sets to sound right, but reinstalling the drivers seemed to fix the problem. Also bundled with the card is the Yamaha S-YXG50 software synthesizer. On our 733MHz PIII test bed, the soft synth used less than 5 percent of the CPU even with fairly complex 32-voice MIDI tunes. Also, the soft-synth patch set's quality is clearly superior to the default hardware wave table.

Overall, the card is a great value, and if you have a reasonably fast system (400MHz Pentium II or better), performance shouldn't be adversely affected to a great degree. It's certainly more of a gamer's card than one for audio enthusiasts. And for eighty bucks, it's practically a steal.

Appeal: A versatile sound card that supports multiple 3D audio standards
Pros: A3D 1.0, EAX, and Sensaura audio support; good software bundle
Cons: Minimalist control panels; reduced internal input options

By Loyd Case
 
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