Asus Phoebus vs Creative Sound Blaster ZxR £185 or £200

ViRuS2k

ViRuS2k

ViRuS2k

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Not sure if i should do this but i want the best sound quality you can get for music and movies and games for my pc.

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I have a RMA to send my asus phoebus back to OCUK for a exchange + £20 for the creative card.

can anyone tell me if there is any difference between the 2, and + point will probably be that creative get far more driver updates to there drivers as the asus team are slow as hell at updating there hardware, they both use different opamps....... is one better than the other ? as the sound quality on the Phoebus is excillent if not for drivers i would keep it but i want the best. anyone know what one is better ?
 
i have just got a phoebus and it's a great card with great sound. I'm using the beta drivers for the Phoebus which haven't had a single glitch.

Why are you RMA the pheobus?
 
Carl_Bennetts said:
i have just got a phoebus and it's a great card with great sound. I'm using the beta drivers for the Phoebus which haven't had a single glitch.

Why are you RMA the pheobus?
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Cause there not even being dedicated to there hardware, they hardly dont even update the card.

not to mention the bf3 crashing issues, granted there fixed now, but i was just instreaded if the creative card is better as it also has a higher snr 124 compaired to phoebus snr.
i think the drivers on the creative card will be way better, have you seen the fugly software thats bundled with the phoebus :/ its god awfull ugly lol
 
I don't mind the software. I don't play BF3 although like you say the beta drivers have fixed that issue.

I do feel what ever card you get it's only as good as the cans or speakers you have plugged in. I need to purchase some top notch headphones now to get the most out of the Phoebus.

The drivers will probably be better for creative but then I've had bad drivers when creative made the fata1ty FPS although they seem to be better now.
 
Carl_Bennetts said:
I don't mind the software. I don't play BF3 although like you say the beta drivers have fixed that issue.

I do feel what ever card you get it's only as good as the cans or speakers you have plugged in. I need to purchase some top notch headphones now to get the most out of the Phoebus.

The drivers will probably be better for creative but then I've had bad drivers when creative made the fata1ty FPS although they seem to be better now.
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I recommend what i use ;) senhieser hd650s ;D
 
:>

Its probably the best soundcard money can buy. Definately superior to the other two for quality (check the specs) -its just that you know, gamers get shafted for higher prices because it says L33T GAMORZ EDITION on it ;)

I had the option to get Pheobus or STX - I went STX and dont regret it one bit!
ONLY advantage these cards have over the STX is that they can output 5.1 to an analogue source whereas the STX is only 2 channel for audio (it can still do multi-surround via optical though)
 
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I have to go on what people say about the STX as i have never owned one.
previous card was a azuntech prelude 7.1 and i would have kept that if it wasnt for the fact i needed pci ex 1x mini port card.
as my 2x 7950s where blocking my only pci lane lol

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though from the azuntech i loved its quality and the phoebus is better than that so the creative would have to be even better to warrant the swap.
 
ViRuS2k said:
I have to go on what people say about the STX as i have never owned one.
previous card was a azuntech prelude 7.1 and i would have kept that if it wasnt for the fact i needed pci ex 1x mini port card.
as my 2x 7950s where blocking my only pci lane lol

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though from the azuntech i loved its quality and the phoebus is better than that so the creative would have to be even better to warrant the swap.
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I use to own a Auzentech Mystique 7.1 card. Man i loved it..But when i had to change motherboard the only PCI socket got blocked by my gfxs. I then bought a Creative Fat1lity Titanium pro i think its called and while the hardware was good i had to wreste with the drivers on a daily basis. Now i have the Essence stx and havent looked back.

EDIT: and in case you arnt aware of it.. if you dont have access to a pciex1 you can always plug the pciex1 card into any other pciex4, 8 or 16 sockets.
 
Have to say I've given up on the Xonars, X-Fi and Z for gaming - driver updates for both Asus and Creative seem to be hit and miss and while a lot of older games run fine increasingly newer games have been problematic. Tested with 2 completely different hardware setups and clean OS installs and seeing the same issues where as the 2 different realtek onboards work without a hitch. Common issues being popping/crackling and the screen going black with the game sounds looping - sometimes recovering sometimes not (never happens when using onboard sound), also with creative cards getting random sound drop outs in some recent games for 10-20 seconds that are accompanied by erratic mouse input until the sound comes back.
 
Rroff said:
Common issues being popping/crackling and the screen going black with the game sounds looping - sometimes recovering sometimes not (never happens when using onboard sound), also with creative cards getting random sound drop outs in some recent games for 10-20 seconds that are accompanied by erratic mouse input until the sound comes back.
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I bet if you taken one of those GTX 470's out, the problem goes away... SLI eating up all the Bandwidth.
 
ViRuS2k said:
Not sure if i should do this but i want the best sound quality you can get for music and movies and games for my pc.

-----------------------------------

I have a RMA to send my asus phoebus back to OCUK for a exchange + £20 for the creative card.

can anyone tell me if there is any difference between the 2, and + point will probably be that creative get far more driver updates to there drivers as the asus team are slow as hell at updating there hardware, they both use different opamps....... is one better than the other ? as the sound quality on the Phoebus is excillent if not for drivers i would keep it but i want the best. anyone know what one is better ?
Click to expand...


THis is an extremely easy question to answer, just get the Creative ZXR. It's your best option if you want the best quality in games and music.
 
zoomee said:
:>

Its probably the best soundcard money can buy. Definately superior to the other two for quality (check the specs) -its just that you know, gamers get shafted for higher prices because it says L33T GAMORZ EDITION on it ;)

I had the option to get Pheobus or STX - I went STX and dont regret it one bit!
ONLY advantage these cards have over the STX is that they can output 5.1 to an analogue source whereas the STX is only 2 channel for audio (it can still do multi-surround via optical though)
Click to expand...

Erm, The specs of the Creative ZXR are roughly the same as the specs of the Essence STX/ST. I doubt anyone would be able to tell the difference between them. Same 124DB signal to noise ratio, they both have Burr Brown dacs, 1792A for the STX and 1794 for the ZXR.

But as you say the ZXR has the advantage of been able to do 5.1 through analogue connections.

Lastly, the ZXR will sound better in games, it will handle positional audio much better.
 
Nelly said:
I bet if you taken one of those GTX 470's out, the problem goes away... SLI eating up all the Bandwidth.
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The thought crossed my mind but I also tried them in my older gaming PC which only has a single GTX260 with the same results. Wish I'd thought to try on the i7 setup I built recently incase its anything daft like not liking the LGA775 architecture.

Tho I think its just poor drivers - when I tried the daniel k drivers on my x-fi all the problems went away but they lacked some of the features I was using at the time.
 
Well i will let you guys know what is better,

ordered the creative ZXR. today and it was shipped today. so im going to pick the best card out of them both..... +`s are optional opamps that you can change on the ZXR aswell though i will find out tomorrow what is the top dog ;)
 
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