Date: March 6, 2003
Article by: Burt Carver (Hardware Reviewer & Newsposter)
Product was donated by: M-Audio
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PRODUCT OVERVIEW (cont'd)

The software included in the package is nothing short of impressive. All too often manufacturers are offering their product at a lower price point by shorting the end user on the bundled software. I personally wouldn't let a software bundle influence my buying decision, but many people do. Here is a list of the enclosed software:

• Driver disk
• Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 (Full Version)
• Mixman Studio (Full Version)
• VJ Lite (Full Version)
• WinDVD 4 Dolby Digital EX Version
• M-Powered Artists CD Sampler
• Trial Version CD - Various music creation software

One thing that really stands out is the amount of full version software here. Most times, software that comes bundled with hardware is 'lite' or 'trial' or 'sample'. This software bundle is outstanding. Did I review any of it? Nope.

INSTALLATION

The card is PCI, and slides into any available PCI slot. As with any installation, uninstall your old sound card / drivers before installing the revo card. I recommend downloading the newest drivers from the M-Audio site. I ran into some issues with the drivers having to do with the speaker database. I ended up banging my head against the wall because of the issues. When I installed the updated drivers, all the problems magically disappeared. Most people shouldn't have any issues with the shipping driver.

DRIVER

The driver has several tabs. Below are screenshots of the various tabs.