Finally getting an XFI - some Qs

mrk

mrk

mrk

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My trusty Santa Cruz is finally getting a new home, I need the gaming performance of an XFI and feel my limiting factor for a high end rig is of course my soundcard which lacks the necessary support for gaming oomph for future of gaming.

I am getting the Extreme Gamer for £56 tomorrow and wanted to find out a few things:

What are the best drivers to get? are there any "lite" drivers? It's been ages since I had a Creative card (Live! 5.1 days) so am not too much up to scratch here.

I also recall someone here mentioning that a mode switcher utility exists but forgot what thread it was in, does anyone have the link handy at all?

Cheers!
 
I've got the Music version, and all I install off the driver disc is the drivers themselves and the Mode Switching software. There's a heap of other stuff on the disc but I didn't need any of it.

Jokester
 
Yup I don't need any of it either, I connect my current card to an external amp driving speakers and my hd485 headphones so don't have any intention of software "enhancements" !

Is the switcher off the cd as well btw ?
 
Yeah, what you need to do is a custom install off the autoloader so it gives you the option to pick and choose what software to install.

Jokester
 
I've never touched revised drivers from Creative, they've always worked out of the box for me and as you say Creative software and all that, if it's not broken don't fix it!

Jokester
 
I download and install the latest drivers off the creative site, before I install any other bits of the creative software.

Then I just put the CD in and choose a custom installation type. Then basically you just tick only what you need, but make sure you untick the sound driver option, as you have already installed the latest drivers!
 
Jokester said:
I've never touched revised drivers from Creative, they've always worked out of the box for me and as you say Creative software and all that, if it's not broken don't fix it!

Jokester
Click to expand...


Good advice : )

Just installing 3dmark 06 and 05 now so I can run a comparison for synthetic tests, HL2 tomorrow :)

Cheers!
 
They add support for various different things in new drivers, such as OpenAL 1.1 in the latest set. It's worth it in my opinion, as they are running fine here.
 
Also, looking at the specsheet the xtremegamer and xtreme music are virtually the same barring the look of the card - is this true? I can't see any spec difference other than the physical number of connections (no flexijack on the gamer) and the gamer is a smaller card too - I don't mind this of course as it will serve my needs but I just want to make sure they're not skimping any hardware processing and offloading it to the CPU by using a smaller PCB when their site states the same spec on all the xfi cards!

I shall get the latest driver I linked to and install the switcher off the CD too!
 
For the mode changing issue, what I do is I just leave it in game mode. I tested it and without any sound effects applied, the sound quality is identical to entertainment mode.

Also if you're not going to use all the fancy features on the card, just install the drivers and use Creative Audio Console which is very simple and discrete. You can even disable every startup process too; though do google the processes before you disable them to see what they are used for.
 
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Seems Gamer is in fact the same as the music minus the gold plated connections and extra connections, it has the 3 normal connections as well as an optical connection which glows red. It does not look or feel like a low quality card at all.

My previous card (Santa Cruz) I had for 3 years and have had many good listens with it, it is one of the best analogue cards in that catagory but I needed something better for games support on EAX3/4/5 as well as hardware dolby decoding (which sounds amazing in movies btw!)

The drivers off the cd were not needed, in fact the web drivers installed the audio console and drivers nicely, no extra crap, much better than my previous experience with Creative software. I then used the x-fi mode changer utility to load at startup so I did not need to change mode manually anymore.

It does have onboard RAM, it is using a proper x-fi processor and it was real easy to install!

Is it better than my santa cruz for playing music? I'd say the x-fi has better virtualisation of stereo channels and the SVM feature is real nice for normalizing the soft/hard frequencies so no distortion gets sent to my amplifier (connected to JPW floorstanderw and senheisser hd485 headphones)

It's certainly better in games and movies though!

I don't like the Crystalizer though, when enabled it seems to make high frequencies too "high" - I prefer a neutral output to my amp and control treble on that but I guess this is a feature for people who don't connect to an amp but rather a speaker or headphone set directly.

Pics:
xfi_1.jpg


xfi_2.jpg


xfi_3.jpg
 
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That must be a newer revision board, the original ones are pretty much full height. Either that or they spread everything out since they need to stick on the extra connectors.

Jokester
 
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