Basic Sounds and Benchmarks

Like all Vortex 2 boards, the Montego 2 works great with the Aureal reference drivers. Since the drivers are the same, so was the functionality, which I covered in my MX300 review. I certainly couldn't hear any difference between the two cards in terms of audio playback quality.

With that being said, I'm going to jump right into the benchmarks here. The Ziff-Davis 3D Audio Winbench 99 results were essentially identical to the MX300 in both 2D and 3D sound. The Aureal reference drivers haven't been updated since my MX300 review in December, so I wouldn't expect these numbers to change until they do. Remember, both cards are powered by the same exact chip!

DirectSound Performance
44.1 kHz, 16 bit, Static
8 Voices	1.52 Percent Used
16 Voices	2.51 Percent Used
32 Voices	5.84 Percent Used
44.1 kHz, 16bit, Streaming
8 Voices	1.42 Percent Used
16 Voices	2.33 Percent Used
32 Voices	5.68 Percent Used
22 kHz, 8 bit, Static
8 Voices	1.41 Percent Used
16 Voices	2.01 Percent Used
32 Voices	3.78 Percent Used
22 kHz, 8 bit, Streaming
8 Voices	1.39 Percent Used
16 Voices	2.08 Percent Used
32 Voices	3.88 Percent Used

DirectSound3D Performance
44.1 kHz, 16 bit, Static
8 Voices	3.74 Percent Used
16 Voices	5.09 Percent Used
32 Voices	29.1 Percent Used
44.1 kHz, 16bit, Streaming
8 Voices	3.81 Percent Used
16 Voices	5.47 Percent Used
32 Voices	29.6 Percent Used
22 kHz, 8 bit, Static
8 Voices	2.98 Percent Used
16 Voices	3.72 Percent Used
32 Voices	17.7 Percent Used
22 kHz, 8 bit, Streaming
8 Voices	3.03 Percent Used
16 Voices	3.84 Percent Used
32 Voices	17.2 Percent Used

Notice the big jump in CPU usage when going from 16 simultaneous streams to 32. As mentioned previously in the MX300 review, the Vortex 2 currently supports only 16 hardware-accelerated DirectSound3D streams. Future driver updates promise support for up to 76, but it's been a while since that announcement, and none of us are holding our breaths.