Xfi longevity

Otaku Punk · 11 Oct 2006 at 21:15

I've been debating getting one of these for a while, and with my recent purchase of a set of logitech z-5400 speakers i can now make the most of it, but i have one worry.

How long will the xfi's remain top of creatives line-up? I have no idea of the sort of turnaround for sound cards, and would want to avoid buying one if better tech is just around the corner. Since the card is about a year old now will creative be releasing anything with the next deluge of hardware (xmas time in preparation for vista etc.)?

oxygene · 11 Oct 2006 at 21:18

Well the last cards to be top bill where top for a good few years if memory serves. And this card was a hell of a jump in tech. I think its safe to assume it will be top for a while

f666 · 28 Oct 2006 at 09:38

just to add to this it appears there are some compatibility issues with vista in that is does not allow hardware acceleration of sound so the x-fi series will need a substantial overhaul

see more at the creative site

here

hohum · 28 Oct 2006 at 16:53

There is still hardware acceleration of sound in Vista, but only via OpenAL... that's the only way any sound card manufacturer or game company can hardware accelerate audio for games in the future. Directsound is software only in Vista.

So, any game that uses OpenAL will still be able to take advantage of XFI cards to the full (Quake 4, Battlefield 2, etc). It should become adopted as the standard in the future for games. As for the original question, yeah I don't think there will be anything better released for a while, the XFI chip was a good while in the making.