This package is an official Creative Labs Beta Release but is NOT provided for download by Creative. The link below will take you to Tomshardware website where you will be able to download the beta package. This release is primarily for Sound Blaster Audigy users and significantly improves gaming performance for all cards in the Sound Blaster Audigy range. It does however also provide benefits for the Audigy 2 family of cards (as shown below). This release is ideal for high-end gamers who want even better performance than they currently enjoy. This release has been tested by Creative Labs for gaming use ONLY. No other functionality has been tested. It should be noted that the Sound Blaster applications provided with your card may not function after installation of this driver. For mixer and speaker configuration the standard Windows apps can be used.
This release will be followed up with a final official driver update that will integrate the performance features with the core driver and application set. The beta release is designed to stop functioning on the 1st of August 2003* by which time the final release previously mentioned will be available.
This update is exclusively for Sound Blaster Audigy and Audigy 2 users running on Windows 2000 or XP ONLY.
Fixes & Features
Sound Blaster Audigy Specific
- Sound Blaster Audigy performance increased by 10%-15% for EAX ADVANCED HD
- Number of simultaneous voices has been doubled from 32 to 64
Sound Blaster Audigy and Audigy 2 Benefits
- Reverb presets setting by game audio engine is now on average 10X faster
- EAX Morphing performance enhanced, typically yeilding a 2X improvement in framerates for morphed sections.
File Details
Operating Systems: Windows XP & 2000
Languages: N/A
Size: 13.6 MBytes (approx 35 minutes @ 56.6Kbits/s)
Filename: aud_betadrv_030417.exe
* My emphasis
Creative Europe,
here scroll down the page a bit
Creative Americas,
here
I had real trouble downloading one that passed the CRC check. So much so I nearly abandoned my efforts to wait until the official driver is updated.
First Impressions
Changes made to system: beta drivers from creative and hardware acceleration cranked up as far as the slider lets me.
So far so good, no obvious problems, fired up E:RT and everything was hunky dory. Overall, no significant impact - unless (like me
) you always feel the need to be running the most up-to-date, bleeding edge drivers (and are comfortable with unsupported beta software), hang on for the offical update from Creative in August. Any performance improvement could be down to the acceleration setting or figments of my imagination (as I don't have any benchmarking SW), but the game ran fine on full acceleration.
From my current understanding, the forthcoming patch will have a much more significant impact.
Does E:RT use the EAX Morphing effects/reverb presets?
Should anything change my mind about this I'll post an update.
Rip
