Having real problems picking a Sound Card

[TW]Fox · 14 Dec 2007 at 13:11

Hi guys,

Well I was going to get either an XFi Xtreme Gamer or an XFi Xtreme Music right after I'd worked out what the difference was. I'd posted on here a while back and you guys said that it used to be problematic with 4Gb of Ram in XP, but this issue had been fixed.

So I made a quick post on the Creative forums to check for compatability with my system. This told me that XFi's and Windows XP with 4Gb remains a complete no and Creative will never fix it.

Whats the story? Will it work or not?

If not, what do I buy instead for around £50?

[TW]Fox · 14 Dec 2007 at 13:34

Butters said:
Because no 32Bit OS will ever see 4GB of Ram or indeed use it, so that was unneccesary to start with and perhaps their SCs reflect this?

Windows sees, and makes full use of, 3.25Gb of Ram. Nothing in my system right now has an issue with that.

If you want to get a 'real' sound card without any of the hangups then look at M-Audio. They quite literally walk the floor with other sound card manufacturers and are quite reasonably priced too and hit the £50 bracket on the head.

The 2496 or Revolution range are your friends

Will check them out. Do the have the same gaming features the XFi range does?

[TW]Fox · 15 Dec 2007 at 02:52

Problem is my sound is primarily used for gaming.

[TW]Fox · 16 Dec 2007 at 02:02

So anyone else running an Xfi with XP and 4Gb of ram?

[TW]Fox · 16 Dec 2007 at 17:52

See this is confusing. Everywhere I ask I am given different info - some people on the Creative forums say the XFi 4Gb issue (What is the issue?) is NOT fixed with XP and will never be fixed. Yet you guys say it is fixed?

[TW]Fox · 16 Dec 2007 at 23:40

helmutcheese said:
Correct as there was no XP32/64+4GB issue AFAIK, he obv has his own issue, probably down to Mobo Bios or drivers.

I do not have a single issue.

Right now, my system works perfectly with 4Gb of Ram. Windows detects and uses 3.25Gb of it. Everything works.

What I would like to know is whether adding an XFi will change this. The people on the Creative forums seem to think it will?

There are no problems with my motherboard.

[TW]Fox · 17 Dec 2007 at 01:07

Whare are the '4gb of ram issues'?

What 4gb related problems will installing an XFi cause me?

[TW]Fox · 17 Dec 2007 at 02:00

yantorsen said:
if the soundcard has 2mb memory then it will reduce the system memory visable to xp32 by 2mb, hardly something to worry about.

If thats the only problem then I don't care, thats not a big deal.

I could ask Google but like this forum, every link contradicts the one I've read before...

[TW]Fox · 17 Dec 2007 at 17:04

So if all that happens is you lose 2mb of memory, why are people so up in arms over it all?

[TW]Fox · 18 Dec 2007 at 13:40

helmutcheese said:
Thats weird, on XP-32 i had 3.25GB showing with 4GB and 768MB Video Memory and 64MB X RAM on Soundcard.

I had 3.25Gb showing with a 320mb video card only. I upgraded to a 512Mb video card and still have 3.25gb.

As for the Xfi - ordered. But I've been told I must wait until I see her after Christmas to get it