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Sound card advice needed!

titaniumx3

titaniumx3

titaniumx3

Soldato
Joined
11 May 2006
Posts
5,786
Hi there! I would really appreciate some advice on a new soundcard. Should I go for this,

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music - OEM (SC-043-CL) £56.99

or this,

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 7.1 EAX Sound Card - OEM (SC-037-CL) £35.84

I mainly play games and also listen to music quite often, using headphones most of the time. I don't care about any fancy sound enhancement features or any of that bloatware nonsense, I just want the best games performance and decent balanced sound quality. I only have 1GB of RAM so I don't want a hundred new processes loading up at startup for features that I'm not going to use. For this reason I'm leaning towards the Audigy 4, but would I be missing anything important if I don't choose an X-Fi? For example things like OpenAL support and EAX, which seem to appear in games a lot these days.

Thanks! :)

EDIT: OOoPs, can a mod please move this to the soundcard section, I had a different window open and posted in the wrong section.
 
Last edited:
Yes thumbs up for the xfi, i was pretty amazed at theincrease insound quality tbh, play quake 4 with onboard then an xfi, worlds apart.
 
Sorry to bring this thread back up but I didn't want to create a new thread.

Anyway I just recieved X-Fi Xtreme Music OEM today, installed the latest drivers off the website and was suprised to find a wimpy litttle "audio console" installed and nothing else; what the heck was the 41mb driver download for? :confused:

I thought the OEM card from ocuk was supposed to be the same as the retail version? Is it possible to get the full control panel?

What I get at the moment is this:

xfiaudioconsolerg7.gif


What I'd like is this:

imageviewev9.png


I don't mind the audio console but it has some of the mixer settings missing, like no equaliser. Anyway to get this installed for my card?
 
I got the OEM version and it didn't come with any driver CD to speak of. I used the latest driver from the creative site. What puzzles me is that the driver is about 40mb yet the audio console that it installs is under 1mb??? My guess is that its detected the sound card as OEM and doesn't install the full control panel software. I was told the OEM cards are same as the retail ones???

In any case thanks for the link I'll give that try.
 
titaniumx3 said:
I got the OEM version and it didn't come with any driver CD to speak of. I used the latest driver from the creative site. What puzzles me is that the driver is about 40mb yet the audio console that it installs is under 1mb??? My guess is that its detected the sound card as OEM and doesn't install the full control panel software. I was told the OEM cards are same as the retail ones???

In any case thanks for the link I'll give that try.
Click to expand...

I think you misunderstand. The driver ONLY installs the driver and a simple audio control panel. In order to get the fancy control panels (entertainment mode and all that) you need to have a CD. As I say, that ISO will sort you out. :)
 
Hmm, so the the 40mb is just for the driver itself?! Thats pretty extreme considering that graphics drivers are less than that. I don't understand why creative don't supply all the software on their site, clearly its not a legal issue if you have users posting the ISOs online; maybe they can't afford the webspace?
 
titaniumx3 said:
Hmm, so the the 40mb is just for the driver itself?! Thats pretty extreme considering that graphics drivers are less than that. I don't understand why creative don't supply all the software on their site, clearly its not a legal issue if you have users posting the ISOs online; maybe they can't afford the webspace?
Click to expand...

Yup, it is quite large. I think they include the Audigy drivers in there as well, at least they used to.
 
you did say you didnt want any bloat ware though dude.

you do realise installing that full console will probably add at least 3 processes to your existing ones lol. :p

Sorry made me chuckle.

If your after no bloat ware, stick with just the driver, and use the app you using ie, media player or itunes, winamp to make any equialiser changes. ;)
 
titaniumx3 said:
Hmm, so the the 40mb is just for the driver itself?! Thats pretty extreme considering that graphics drivers are less than that. I don't understand why creative don't supply all the software on their site, clearly its not a legal issue if you have users posting the ISOs online; maybe they can't afford the webspace?
Click to expand...


nVidia ForceWare drivers are around this size if not bigger?
 
gorebrush said:
nVidia ForceWare drivers are around this size if not bigger?
Click to expand...

The radeon catalyst drivers are about 34mb and that includes CCC, the king of bloatware.

Datamonkey said:
you did say you didnt want any bloat ware though dude.

you do realise installing that full console will probably add at least 3 processes to your existing ones lol. :p

Sorry made me chuckle.

If your after no bloat ware, stick with just the driver, and use the app you using ie, media player or itunes, winamp to make any equialiser changes. ;)
Click to expand...

Hmm, I guess you are right but it would be cool to check out the hardware equaliser as it should be better than software equalisers that come with winamp/foobar2k. Doesn't it just let you install the control panel? I'm sure that can be stopped from running at startup.
 
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