To test the MX200's raw speed, we benchmarked the card in the following Sharky Extreme machine
against a standard Sound Blaster 16 ISA card:
- Intel P2-400 CPU
- Abit BX6 440BX Mainboard
- Matrox Mystique G200 16MB AGP video card
- Metabyte Wicked3D 12MB Voodoo2 3D accelerator
- Corsair 128MB 10ns PC-100 SDRAM
- Adaptec 2490UW Ultra-Wide SCSI Controller
- IBM Ultrastar 9 8.4GB UWSCSI HD
- Plextor SCSI 32X CD-ROM
- Win95 OSR 2.1
Test Conditions and Specifications:
All tests were run a total of three times with the results averaged to determine final score.
VSYNCH was OFF for all tests, allowing maximum frame rate performance. DX5 and DX6 Beta were
used on both cards for all tests, and produced no appreciable differences.
Benchmark Results
| 800x600x16bpp |
Quake II Timedemo1 |
Quake II Massive1 |
Turok TMARK |
Forsaken FMARK |
ESP |
| Sound Blaster 16 |
67.6 |
50.5 |
65.5 |
97.6 |
$50.00 |
| Diamond Monster Sound MX200 |
72.1 |
53.4 |
68.1 |
100.1 |
$140.00 |
All of the A3D supported routines were turned 'OFF' for these tests, and even then the MX200
still shows a slight improvement over a common SB16 ISA card. The amazing thing is that
even with A3D enabled, the Forsaken score above doesn't change at all. This indicates
that the MX200 is actually doing what it promises, in that it's protecting the CPU from
as much of the workload as possible and is allowing the Positional 3D streams to operate
with no performance penalty.
Audio clarity in the games themselves was top notch, and A3D performed as well as it
has during previous Sharky Extreme sound card reviews.
Overall, the MX200 (esp: $140) is a solid investment for anyone ranging from the common
gamer, all the way up to the person looking for 48khz sampling ability.
