Creative X-FI: any good?

Speedy

Speedy

Speedy

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At this moment I'm using the sound card that is bundled with my ASUS P5N32-E SLI mobo (it uses soundmax drivers). I use the Z5500 speaker system. I'm thinking of buying a Creative X-FI sound card. Now my question: Would that really boost the audio quality, or are these cards only useful for rendering hardware audio in games?

And what 5.1 / 7.1 Creative X-FI card would be good for boosting audio quality? It needs to be a PCIE card and must have a connection to attach the front audio (ac'97).
 
The integrated solution are becoming very good these days, the only big improvement you will notice is the EAX, which makes the game feel far more enjoyable with a 5.1 setup. 2.1 I'm not so sure about.
Realtek-based onboard chips do EAX 2 in software but it's incomplete.
 
I don't think you can get a proper X-Fi card in PCIe yet.
I have the XtremeMusic. The gaming quality is superb and the audio quality for music is noticably better to my old Audigy.
I haven't had any issues with it & the drivers work just fine too, much to my suprise.
 
Just get a 2nd hand one for £30, it's well worth the money. You get EAX in games (not in vista though without Alchemy) and for me the Crystaliser makes Mp3s sound a lot better.

OT: robbi187 your sig is too big mate it has to be 400x75 <20kb with max 1 line of text directly above or beneath.
 
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steve258 said:
not in vista though
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Does that mean that I can't get EAX in Vista with all sound cards or just with older cards?

edit: I'm thinking of buying the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer sound card. Would that card work with Vista X64?
 
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Vista scrapped support for DirectSound/EAX hardware abstraction layer so you don't get EAX, it's not the drivers or the cards it's Vista. However you can download Alchemy for free if you have an X-Fi and what it does is translating EAX signal to OpenAL which is supported by Vista. The only drawback is you have to set it up for each game individually.
 
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I found music and games both sounded a lot better when i got my x-fi, works well with my z5500 and headphones for when im having a midnight gaming sesh.
 
The software will detect any game that you installed with EAX support. If it detects them then it will configure them automatically, otherwise you'll need to manually selecting the directories for the games.
 
steve258 said:
The software will detect any game that you installed with EAX support. If it detects them then it will configure them automatically, otherwise you'll need to manually selecting the directories for the games.
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Thanks everyone. I'll order the card tomorrow. :)
 
The new sound card is really good. Got my Z5500 connected to it in a 5.1 setup. Crystalizer turned on, CMSS 3D turned off, and the Z5500 set to Stereo X2. That makes a very good and bright sound (I've turned off Stereo upscaling, because that never works correctly).

The audio in games is also very good, especially BioShock :D
 
I remember going X-Fi when BF2 Came out.. the difference was amazing. The main thing i noticed is that. when a lot was going on, my old soundcard used to drop channels in favour of other channels.. This never happend on the X-Fi in fact more were available and it sounded great.. love it!
 
I downloaded Alchemy but have never used EAX in games before.

Do you guys switch to game mode? and then which EAX preset do you use? Sounds pretty interesting.
I normally just keep the console in Entertainment Mode regardless of what I'm doing :/
 
Herojuana said:
I downloaded Alchemy but have never used EAX in games before.

Do you guys switch to game mode? and then which EAX preset do you use? Sounds pretty interesting.
I normally just keep the console in Entertainment Mode regardless of what I'm doing :/
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I used to switch to game mode.. then kept forgetting.. have just moved and speakers are not setup.. so have not bothered recently.. but then im using pantsy monitor speakers at mo until we get organised! which wants to be soon! lol
 
yeh I often forget to switch modes lol. be nice if it has some way of linking executables to certain modes.

I can honestly say that even tho creative do suck a lot with support (like when they decided no longer to support my mp3 player back in the old 64meg internal card days), my x-fi xtrememusic has been one of the best purchases of hardware I've ever made...cost me 80 quid oem nearly two years ago, and not only has it been a massive improvement in gaming and music quality, but there still isn't anything much in the way of a better option for gaming and music on one card, all the higher x-fi models being pretty pointless imo unless you particularly need than front i/o or whatever. x-ram is pretty useless from what I hear.

but the crystaliser definately makes mp3s better imo, as does cmss 3d which lets you take advantage of a decent setup, sending the voice to the center and effectively acting as a crossover so the bass comes out the sub and the front stereo speakers can perform better.
 
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