Best Hardware: Aureal Vortex 2 & Diamond MX300
The past year proved to be a very good one for PC gaming hardware. 3D graphics got prettier and faster. Force-feedback finally arrived on the scene in full, um, force. Memory and CPUs got cheap. And PC audio grew a third dimension.
For this year's Hardware Product of the Year, we thought seriously about nVidia's venerable RIVA TNT, the first 2D/3D chipset to outgun a single Voodoo2. But we've given awards to 3D graphics chipsets for the past several years, so we decided it was time for a change.
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So this year, the award goes to Aureal Semiconductor's Vortex 2 audio chipset and Diamond Multimedia's MonsterSound MX300. Aureal first brought convincing 3D audio to the PC market and helped move audio to the PCI bus two years ago with its Vortex chipset and its A3D API to make 3D audio programming easier for developers. The Vortex 2 chipset adds more rendering horsepower, as well as rendering features like occlusion and reflection. Games like Jedi Knight and, more recently, Half-Life and Thief: The Dark Project have shown what a difference good 3D audio can make in a game. Diamond Multimedia has been an Aureal champion, and Diamond's marketing muscle helped make Aureal a household name for PC gamers.
This year's runner-up is Microsoft's SideWinder Force-Feedback Wheel: It was the best force-feedback wheel released in 1998 and, along with games like EA's Need for Speed III, helped force-feedback find a home in PC gaming.
Runner-up: SideWinder Force-Feedback Wheel, Microsoft
Next: Special Awards
