Creative X-FI: any good?

Speedy · 12 Jan 2008 at 16:31

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).

Speedy · 12 Jan 2008 at 18:42

Monkeynut said:
the only big improvement you will notice is the EAX, which makes the game feel far more enjoyable with a 5.1 setup.

Okay thanks. Better 5.1 quality in games is very useful to me.

Speedy · 13 Jan 2008 at 13:17

steve258 said:
not in vista though

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?

Speedy · 13 Jan 2008 at 17:35

steve258 said:
what it does is translating EAX signal to OpenAL

So if I want EAX, then I need to configure each game to use OpenAL after installing Alchemy, right?

Speedy · 13 Jan 2008 at 18:13

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.

Thanks everyone. I'll order the card tomorrow.

Speedy · 17 Jan 2008 at 10:56

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