Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty required - Although Not by Creative

Gimpymoo · 26 Oct 2007 at 11:37

Am looking for a premium card VERY similiar in spec to the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty including the front bay..

I also like the idea of the surround sound via stereo heaphones which is apparently quiet good on the Creatives.

The only catch is, I dont want it to be Creative as their apparent lack of driver support is worrying.

Any ideas please?

Thanks.

RaiderX · 26 Oct 2007 at 11:53

the drivers are better with the Xfi cards now, since the latest drivers ive had no problems with my card at all, i have the fatality with front bay

theufnk007 · 26 Oct 2007 at 12:04

I think the drivers are fine if you have 2gb of ram, most people experience problems when upgading to 4gb. I had my sound card running just fine on 2gb with NO issues at all. When i upgraded to 4gb i had to remove the souncard and now use it as a paper weight until creative bring some drivers out, that work with my current rig.

Greenlizard0 · 26 Oct 2007 at 15:24

I'd like to know the answer to this. A front bay is very important to me too.

Kobrakai · 26 Oct 2007 at 15:27

RaiderX said:
the drivers are better with the Xfi cards now, since the latest drivers ive had no problems with my card at all

They are better but not perfect. I still have a random issue where will be talking on Ventrilo and suddenly my microphone will just transmit static, sometimes it will go away by itself after a while but normally the only way I can fix it is by restarting the PC. Annoying when you’re trying to play an online game with friends. And this started happening the same day I installed the latest drivers. :rolleyes:

stealthgeek · 26 Oct 2007 at 16:48

I too am waiting for a successor to Creative, but I dont think we are going to get one any time soon. I guess its a case of grin 'n' bear it until then

Frame352 · 26 Oct 2007 at 17:15

theufnk007 said:
I think the drivers are fine if you have 2gb of ram, most people experience problems when upgading to 4gb. I had my sound card running just fine on 2gb with NO issues at all. When i upgraded to 4gb i had to remove the souncard and now use it as a paper weight until creative bring some drivers out, that work with my current rig.

Sorry for the hijack chaps, but can I ask if this issue is related to the use of 4GB of RAM, or the use of Vista64? Or do Creative's drivers affect both? Reason I ask is, I already have a copy of Vista32 which I'm going to install on my new build next month. But I'll probably put 4GB of RAM in this build as a) it's so cheap now, and b) I'll probably be going 64 bit next year. I want an X-Fi in there too, but will have to have a rethink if Vista32 + 4GB + X-Fi = poo.

FatRakoon · 27 Oct 2007 at 23:29

Id like to put my 2p in if thats ok.

My main PC is currently running an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum with Drive bay.

Ok, I know its not XFI but bear with me.

Im currently on 4GB and have been for a few months now, and I have not had a single issue at all... However... Here comes the catch...

As of about 3 days ago, the sound started to click. fairly randomly just that little click sound of when you play a Vinyl record, and so, I had alisten to the speakers to see if I could catch if it was coming out of any of them in particular but I noticed that the speakers were not playing right?

I realised that the Left/Righyt were playign out of the Center/Bass speakers and the Surr L/R and C/B were not playing properly at all???

Now, after lots and lots of messing about, unplugging and plugging I have got the L/R speakers right, but the C/B and Back Speakers are not playing.
I have had the card in and out so much, I felt perverted, and I have instaleld, uninstalled cleaned and uncleaned a whole host of various drivers and nothing seems to be helping it?

Of course naturally, I thought the card was buggered, and so I took that card and swapped it with the Audigy 1 and LiveDrive ( My speakers are Altec Lansing 995s and I really have no choice but to have the drive bay thingy because there is no headphone socket in the speakers themselves ) but guess what?

It was the same on that too, and yet the ZS in the other PC were now running fine?

I have thought that maybe the install went poo-poo perhaps, but didnt think about the 4GB issue with creatives as I have been using this very card with 4GB for some months without any problems.

Maybe I was wrong?

I have one small issue though with this particular Mobo...

Its the DS3 and the RAM is 4x1GB Geil...

It took me absolutely ages to get it seated correctly, so if I take a pair of sticks out, Im not going to get it back up and running in any great hurry.