What's in the box?

The Instruction Manual

The MX300 has a fairly decent 38 page manual, which is somewhat unusual. It includes basic information on installation and getting started with the software. Surprisingly, it also includes a few technical graphs of total harmonic distortion and frequency response curves for the card.

Games Bundle

Two games are included with the card: Half-Life Day One OEM version, and Recoil full version. While Recoil isn't terribly exciting, Half-Life is easily one of the best games of the year, and both games take full advantage of the MX300's sound capabilities.

Other Jazzy Software

One piece of included software I found particularly interesting was Zoran's SoftDVD. Having recently made the big jump to DVD-ROM, I have been playing around with several different software DVD decoders, and they are difficult to come by-none of them are free. This full version of Zoran's SoftDVD has the ability to play back to all four speakers supported by the MX300, and can even render the 5 Dolby Digital channels in virtual 3D audio for two-speaker setups. It's nice that Diamond had the forethought to include a software DVD solution, and it will become more and more useful as more people make the inevitable jump from CD to DVD in 1999. Having a software DVD decoder means you can forgo the expense of buying a separate hardware DVD decoder board, assuming you have a P2-300 or better.

Finally, Diamond has become a big supporter of the MP3 compressed music format, as you can see with their recent release of the Rio MP3 player/walkman-like device. However, the MP3 software they have included with the MX300, MusicMatch, is the same version that you can download for free from the internet. It's a nice addition to the package, but all it does is save you a half-hour of downloading time. The MX300 has no special hardware MP3 capabilities.