3DsoundSurge Review: ForteMedia's FM801

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Important Info:

Price : About $50

API Support : DirectSound, DS3D, EAX 1.0, and A3D 1.0 (by translating to DS3D calls, works with most but not all titles). A3D 1.0 only supported with the VXD drivers.

Minimum System Requirements:

Pentium CPU 133Mhz or equivalent
PCI Bus with one available slot
16MB of RAM (32MB if you use software wavetable with 4MB sound library)
12MB of hard disk space (Basic Installation)
CD-ROM and Audio cable
Speakers

Reviewers PC:

Mark
- Win98
- Celeron 333a o/c 416
- 128MB PC100 ram
- Creative TNT
- Creative Voodoo Blaster 12 M
- 6.1 and 13 GIG EIDE HD
- For four speaker testing purpose I hooked the card up to Videologic's Sirocco Crossfire speaker system using the analog inputs as well as MidiLand S4-7100. For 6-speaker testing I used the MidiLand S4-7100 and the Abit SP-50. For two speaker testing purposes I used the same speaker systems but only connecting to the front channels as well as the Diamond Audio Technology HPM-4100 and for headphones testing I used a set of Sennheiser HD525s. Digital output was tested with the MidiLand ADS-2000 as well as the Cambridge SoundWorks DTT2500 and Creative DTT3500.

Mikael
- Win98
- Celeron 300a o/c 450
- 128MB PC100 ram
- GeForce DDR
- 6.4 GB Quantum SE
- For four speaker testing purpose I hooked the card up to Videologic's Sirocco Crossfire speaker system using the analog inputs and later in testing I used Videologic's Digi Theatre speaker system for 6-speaker testing. For two speaker testing purposes I used the VideoLogic Sirocco Pro as well as the same speaker systems but only connecting to the front channels and for headphones testing I used a set of Sennheiser HD5570

Specifications

PCI 2.2 Compliant
PCI Bus Power Management rev. 1.0 Compliant
PCI Bus Master For PCI Audio
AC97 ver. 2.1 Compliance
Microsoft DirectSound and MMSystem Compliance
Software 64-voice Wavetable Synthesizer support available (Optional)
Software dynamic positional 3D Audio support available (Optional)
Native DOS Game Support without Software Emulation
Analog/Digital Joystick Interface
Legacy Audio compatibility
AdLib compatible Music Synthesizer
Hardware Sound Blaster Pro compatibility
MPU401 mode MIDI interface Joystick

In this review we will take a generic look at how a ForteMedia FM801-AS and FM801-AU based card performs for playing music, games and DVD movies. We will also compare it to true hardware DD 5.1 decoders and other soundcards. Soundcards using the FM801-AS chips includes BestData’s Theatrix and Skywell’s Magic Sound Live. Soundcards using the newer FM801-AU chip includes Mushroom’s Siren Audio I. We will not be able to cover the older FM801 chip named FM801-A1 which uses different drivers. We will point out where differences between the FM801-AS and FM801-AU based cards exist.