This is primarily of interest to home cinema enthusiasts with appropriate 5.1 amplified speaker setups, though a number of other configurations are viable. Without this, the six-channel output would be of little use. The physical bundle consists of the sound card itself, a short breakout cable for additional audio connections, and an infra-red sensor unit paired with a rather dinky remote control. Audio connections use stereo mini-jacks. The card spine carries the main front stereo output, along with a line level stereo input and mono microphone input for recording.
Installation is painless.
The card was tested under Windows 98 SE with no problems whatsoever, allocating resources happily in a PC stuffed with other peripherals. WDM drivers are available for Windows 2000 users. Gaming performance is more of a mixed bag. Fortunately, Abit has bundled a licensed copy of Yamaha's S-YXG50 software WaveTable synthesiser. This has support for the extended MIDI specification known as XG, allowing richer tonality to be drawn from otherwise standard sounds.