Prelude or Xonar?

Well, what put you off the Elite Pro? Because the Prelude is just an X-Fi at heart from what I know.

I recently picked up a Xonar (had an Audigy 2 ZS) and I'm very happy with it so far, although I've never actually used the Prelude so I can't compare. All I know is I'm happy to be rid of any Creative products, absolutely hated the driver problems and support issues.
 
Gimpymoo said:
Vista x64.
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Save some money and stick with your xfi then, use the unofficial creative driver set (I've posted them in this section, do a search)

Once you've installed them, set 24/192 in the control panel and try to use ASIO output where possible. Sound quality will be fantastic.

Since moving to those drivers I have not encountered a single problem. :)
 
The problem is, the Xonar is not as good in the driver department as some people seem to make out. I used to have one (sold it on). It was a good card but it lacked the features the xfi had and while the drivers were better than the xfi's it was not by much. They still had their fair share of problems.


What board do you have and what is the nf4 issue? I never had an issue with nf4 with my elite pro on xp or vista.

The pelrude still makes use of the xfi chip and drivers so while the board does use better components, it's got a chance of suffering similar or new xfi related problems.
 
Looks like its got interesting with the Xonar D2X EAX 5.0 update... however...

Xonar
It appears the EAX 5.0 Encoding is done via software which puts pressure on the CPU, HOWEVER, the DD LIVE encoding is done on hardware.

Prelude
EAX 5.0 encoding is done on hardware ALTHOUGH the DD Live encoding is done via software.

Which one is going to be more CPU intensive?

Also, is OpenAL on the Xonar hardware or software based?
 
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the xonar doesnt do eax5.0. it only does eax2.0 as does every other card that isnt an xfi:)

like i said, if your main requirement is gaming, get the prelude.
 
james.miller said:
yeah? on what games then lol?
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Well, I meant the driver works great. To be honest I wouldn't even know if EAX5 works since I don't think I have any games installed that actually support it, or none that allow me to select it.

I think Battlefield 2 supports it so I might try that. I'd have to have a dig around in my installed games to find any more though. :/

EDIT: Apparantly TimeShift works with EAX5, which is one of the games I immediately noticed had working positional audio. I'm guessing it works then!
 
Gimpymoo said:
Looks like its got interesting with the Xonar D2X EAX 5.0 update... however...

Xonar
It appears the EAX 5.0 Encoding is done via software which puts pressure on the CPU, HOWEVER, the DD LIVE encoding is done on hardware.

Prelude
EAX 5.0 encoding is done on hardware ALTHOUGH the DD Live encoding is done via software.

Which one is going to be more CPU intensive?

Also, is OpenAL on the Xonar hardware or software based?
Click to expand...

Anyone?
 
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