Ceative Soundblaster X-Fi, Worth getting the Music edition?

ernysmuntz

ernysmuntz

ernysmuntz

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Hi there, I've seen the "Music" edition of the X-Fi going for peanuts. I know it lacks the RAM of the other models, but in reality what does this actually mean from a gaming point of view etc...

what would I be missing Vs the Fatality?

Will frame rates be lower, will effects be missing....?

Thanks
 
I don't think it'd make that much difference in terms of music or DVD's.

But games may be different, the Fata1ty was designed with gaming in mind as opposed to the other X-Fi models and having just played Quake 4 on my machine I can definetely hear the difference a good card makes. I think certain effects will be missing games, but I don't think that it would affect frame rate.

But then this will also depend on what speakers/headphones you have, so of course they'd be no point in splashing out on a top of the range sound card, if they're only producing sound through other poor hardware.
 
There will be NO sound difference at all compared to the Fatality version. In anything.

And it's a brilliant sound card ;)

EDIT: The onboard RAM makes little to no difference at the moment.
 
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Klo said:
But it is future proofing, which could be useful.
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Go for the standard one, or the OEM (as long as that's not the cut down version) it should be the same, but Dell supplied SB X-Fi Music have some features removed, think DD/DTS decoding.

There's been many complaints with this card regarding crackling btw.
 
It really depends how picky you are about sound.

I'm picky and I love my XFI...and games that support openAL are just amazing when you have decent headphones/speakers.

Also I'd get some klipsch speakers or something instead of the z-5500s....I had the z-5500s before with my XFI ...it was an awesome combination but sound reproduction isn't as good because it's running through 2 DSPs (xfi has one as does the z5500)....so getting speakers that just output the straight signal would be better IMO.
 
got my card today, smooth enough setup apart from one blue screen.. restarted and it was fine..

plugged in my £50 5.1 surround sound system and played a rocky tune.. sounds absolutely class! with decent speakers it should be awesome!

Downloading all the software to go along with it now.
 
chrismox said:
Is there anything I need to install for this card other than the 40mb drivers from Creative's site?
Click to expand...

You don't need to install the other control panels etc, but there's a few things you can't do with the standard panel, e.g. adjust individual speaker volumes.
 
i'd say go for the music or the pro (desktop thingy) one

the front drive bay ones are tacky ;)

got the music myself, it has awesome sound :) -again, through 5500's
 
Dont forget to install the creative Volume Panel. I once did a clean install of XP and installed the drivers from just the ones available from the net. Thjis didnt install the creative volume panel. Had to uninstall and reinstall from original CD and did a custom install and selected the creative volume panel by ticking it in the install process. In my experience with this card all you really need is the Drivers and Volume Panel. Although their Media source Organiser is pretty decent for organising and playing your music

Edit: Im using the Creative Megaworks THX 2.1 250D speakers with mine and the sound is great!
 
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