Test System:

• PII 300 MHz, 75 MHz bus
• 64 meg of SDRAM
• Quantum UDMA 2.5
• Toshiba 24x CD
• STB Velocity 128 AGP
• Quantum3d Obsidian
• JAZZ 3d Speaker System front
• Hitachi Speaker System rear
• Voxon DX17

I had almost given up hope on ISA sound boards when Guillemot sent me their original Game Theatre 64. Installation was relatively painless, and sound quality was great. Now that the Dynamic 3d edition is out, and at a much lower price of $99 US, Ubisofts board is a better bargain than ever.

The GT64 is aimed at the same market as the AWE 64 and the Diamond Monster Sound. However, the GT64 is not a PCI bus as is the Diamond. Rather, like the AWE 64 it shares the old 16 bit ISA bus. But though this sounds like a drawback, most users would never notice the difference, and the GT64 has the advantage of running in DOS, where the Diamond requires a second board alongside for DOS support.

As I implied above, the AWE 64 gave me some trouble during installation. The GT64 installed painlessly in WIN95. A separate install is required for DOS utilities, but the driver calls are added to your Autoexec file. In fact, the drivers initialize the board and then exit so no memory additional memory is required. The GT64 can also enable four speaker capability in MS DOS mode.

The board is Sound Blaster Pro compatible for DOS titles. I tested Janes F15, F22: ADF and M1 Tank Platoon II in DOS and each ran flawlessly. MIDI was easy to use and I preferred the cleaner sound over the AWE64. You can easily add echo, reverb or chorus effects and expand the sense of space in the sound. Quite a cool ability, but if you turn these effects too high you will add some noise. Incidentally, the GT64 does 64 voices IN HARDWARE, while the AWE64 uses Waveguide synthesis to produce the extra 32 voices. This means CPU strain that the GT64 avoids. If you want or need 64 voices, this is a nice feature, and with a RISC-based 50 MIPS digital signal processor you have a LOT of power here.

The GT64 comes with ready made setups for various titles, and with each selection you may choose 2D or 4D sound. If you only have two speakers don't worry, selecting two speaker sound for a given game will give you simulated 3D sound from two speakers. The best option is two sets of speakers, however, and then you can choose four dimensional sound.

With four speakers connected, two in front and two behind me, I tried Team Apache and F22: ADF and was amazed at the effect. I definitely prefer the 3d sound of this board to the 3d production in the AWE 64. Compared to the Diamond Monster Sound the Game Theatre still holds its own running under DirectSound 3d. Positional audio is definitely the wave of the future and Ubisoft is aiming at the right place at the right time. Ubisofts Game Theatre boards are the only gaming boards on the market other than Diamond that allow you to directly connect two sets of speakers.

Naturally the board has a game port also, and all my games worked perfectly. Unfortunately the port is not digital so far as I know, so if you add a digital port later you will need to disable the game port by running the DOS utility.

4 MB of Ram was standard on the original Game Theatre, but the 3d has only two. This is adequate for most gamers and virtually all simmers, who tend not to use music in game anyway. But you can still expand to up to 18MB using standard SIMMs. Need even MORE voices (what are you vying for a spot as the local sound studio?), you can upgrade to 96 voices by adding a daughter board. Whew!

SUMMARY

Ubisoft has aimed at taking out Diamond and CL with this board, and I think they have done a pretty good job. Ease of installation, ease of use in DOS and WIN95, flexibility, expandibility, great sound, and special effects at the tip of your hat. Its great for games and great for MIDI. I'm really not sure what else one could ask for, except maybe a PCI slot. For about $99 US this is a solid value and easy to recommend. Still don't believe me? Boot magazine chose this board as the best gaming value in their March edition.

Check the Guillemot WEB SITE for new information. Ubisoft also has a new toll free support line: (888) 893-2648.

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