The sound quality in the two A3D 2.0 games that I tested was simply excellent to say the least. Half-life, which in my opinion is one of the BEST games to show off A3D 2.0, had superior sound via A3D 2.0. The new reflections engine is simply awe inspiring. Sounds coming from behind a wall around the corner, really sound like they are coming from behind the wall around the corner. This is something that the Sound Blaster Live! has trouble doing, even with version 2.0. Positional audio has also improved from A3D version 1.0. With four speakers... or even 2 speakers, sounds coming from behind, in-front, or beside you sound real, almost too real. Drakan is a perfect example of this.

One problem that has haunted the A3D 2.0 cards from the begining was CPU utilization, usually higher then most, which can bog down a game's fps. I used the newest available drivers for my card which were v2.2, which I used to test CPU utilization, and frame rate. I know you are probably sick of seeing benchmarks, so I am going to keep them to a minimum.

Test system:
celeron 300MHz (not a)
Abit BH6 mainboard
64 mb pc 100 ram
Elsa Erazor III w/32 mb ram
Maxtor 10GB 5400 RPM HD
Terratec Xlerate Pro
A3D 2.0
3.5" floppy drive
2x2x6x CD-RW drive
Zip 100 Drive

(as you can see the A3D 2.0 drivers have improved greatly, only a drop of 1.8 fps)

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