Thinking about buying a X-Fi

[Loud_Silence]

I have a integrated Realtek ALC883 sound card and Creative 2.1 speakers. They have an excellent sound quality and fidelity. But the sound card only supports EAX 2.0 and it doesn't do well.
I'm thinking about buying a X-Fi sound card, but 80 bucks for the most basic model seems a bit expensive to me, and i'm not really sure of the advantages.
Also i'm hearing about issues with clicking noises and other stuff with those cards. Mine never had any problems.
But the quality will really be better? Is EAX 5.0 worth it?

[Dowly]

Cant say anything about 5.0, but I went from Realtek 5.1 to X-fi Gamer and the sound is MUCH better.

[Loud_Silence]

Originally Posted by Dowly

Cant say anything about 5.0, but I went from Realtek 5.1 to X-fi Gamer and the sound is MUCH better.

How better? Volume, quality, fidelity, surround, WHAT?

[Arclight]

All of it. More powerfull and crisp. Hardware processing is always better than software, no question about it.

I have X-fi Titanium (2nd gen). Had no problems in the past, but suffering from tearing after moving to Win7 RC 64-bit (no issues on RC or beta 32-bit). It could also be from moving to new CPU and 4GB RAM, but the OS seems most likely cause. 90% certain it's IRQ sharing issue.

Most games don't support EAX, so don't buy for that, get it for quality of sound.

[Reece]

I had problems running SH3 (sound breaking up) with the onboard sound (AC97 HD) so I purchased a PCIE X-Fi Xtreme audio card, although SH3 sound is ok now the sound is nothing special, also haven't been able to get the front panel audio plug to function properly and no separate mic/aux plugs, you can only have one or the other. Support was non existant, the card came without XP drivers & had none at their website either, after a lot of complaints from people they finally decided to produce XP drivers!!
Wonder if I could have both sound devices enabled, any thoughts?

[Arclight]

Sure can.

Using X-fi for speakers and onboard for headset.

Support is always a problem with Creative. Even when they do offer it, it seems amateurish at best. My build in chip offers some options the 150,- + creative card doesn't.

Think you need that I/O station for proper input/output options on these cards.

[Wolfehunter]

X-Fi rock. Sound quality is top. Problem is make sure its your creative lab's card is compatible with your mobo board. If not you just waisted that cash.

Example... nForce boards aren't compatible with X-fi cards...

Vista also doesn't like X-fi unless your using XP.

I've used my X-Fi elite pro on my old rig when I had XP and then switched to Vista. That was my first mistake. You loose alot of feature that makes gaming great.

Second was buying a new rig with nforce board which included a X-Fi extreme music card and its not compatible... damb dell for that one.

Long story short do your research first.

Goodluck

WH

[goldorak]

Honestly don't buy a Creative card unless you find a discount of 50% or more on the list price. They are not worth it.
Go with a sound card from Asus, even a c-media model from Hi-Tech is better value.
EAX is a dead end. It was with Vista and it will be so with Windows 7.
Just ask yourself which new games have come only with EAX 5. For all intents and purposes EAX stopped at 3.0; 4.0 and 5.0 are very very rare used extensions.
If you want dolby digital live or dts live then some integrated chipsets are capable no need to get a dedicated soundcard, and quality is no issue since its all digital.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Arclight

All of it. More powerfull and crisp. Hardware processing is always better than software, no question about it.

I have X-fi Titanium (2nd gen). Had no problems in the past, but suffering from tearing after moving to Win7 RC 64-bit (no issues on RC or beta 32-bit). It could also be from moving to new CPU and 4GB RAM, but the OS seems most likely cause. 90% certain it's IRQ sharing issue.

Most games don't support EAX, so don't buy for that, get it for quality of sound.

All the Realtek ALC models do hardware processing. THey are so accurate, Creative Labs now certifies the ALC 88X series to run Creative Labs software.

http://www.gigabyte.us/FileList/WebP...090106_xfi.htm

-S

[Loud_Silence]

There is a difference between an on-board or integrated component and an expansion card, and software processing and hardware processing.
Software processing is when the CPU emulates a sound device and processes the sounds.
Hardware processin is when a device independent from the CPU does the job, it doesnt matter if that hardware is attached on the motherboard, or its on an expansion card.
In my motherboard, the sound chip is controlled by the south bridge but is physically separated from it. On the other hand, the onboard graphics chip is integrated on the north bridge.
My sound card has VERY GOOD QUALITY. Right now i use a stereo 2.1 (but the jacks can be re-tasked to use a three-jack 5.1), but in DooM 3 every gunshot makes my armchair rumble!

[Reece]

Thanks Arclight, I will give it a go, I use my pc for HF utility station decoding & weather sat decoding, having just 1 input is a pain, so I might try input from onboard and output from X-Fi card, what could go wrong!!

[Arclight]

I even "succesfully deploy" 3 cards; X-fi add-in card, onboard Realtek chip, usb souncard that came with the headset. You could get some issues with IRQ sharing, but it should all be possible and this problem didn't occur for me untill I moved to Win7 64-bit, liked stated above.

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

All the Realtek ALC models do hardware processing. THey are so accurate, Creative Labs now certifies the ALC 88X series to run Creative Labs software.

http://www.gigabyte.us/FileList/WebP...090106_xfi.htm

-S

I have ALC 889A on my board, and I'm pretty sure they don't do hardware acceleration. I definetely can't enable it in games. Remember the X-fi extreme audio? X-fi brand, but no such chip. I think the Realtek chips offer X-fi features through emulation, ie the load still goes to the CPU.



Goldorak, I agree Creative cards aren't worth it, much like Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. But you're less likely to experience problems with these things, since they're the "standard". And no, EAX is bolocks. Most games don't support it, and the ones that do haven't given me the impression that it really makes much difference.

[Zachstar]

Simply put. Until they get serious about 64bit support and WIn7 I would not consider an X-Fi

They used to be the best but in my view they have been too smug in their superiority and allowed even Realtek to catch up. The modern Realtek chipsets are good enough for me to play ARMA II through analog 5.1 to my 300 dollar receiver.

For a dedicated card tho. In my view C-media is the best bang for the buck. The quality is great and they are built for gaming. Many people like to use the USB based ones for headsets or even laptop gaming because they fit such quality into such small form factors.

[Zachstar]

I used to think EAX is what gave games the ability to do 5.1 but isn't it Directsound that does that these days?

OH forgot to mention about C-Media folks. It is by far best to get drivers from the C-Media website for your C-media cards chipset. Then you can pretty much safely ignore whoever made the card.

So even this POS becomes quality because of the chipset. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16829130001

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Arclight

I even "succesfully deploy" 3 cards; X-fi add-in card, onboard Realtek chip, usb souncard that came with the headset. You could get some issues with IRQ sharing, but it should all be possible and this problem didn't occur for me untill I moved to Win7 64-bit, liked stated above.
I have ALC 889A on my board, and I'm pretty sure they don't do hardware acceleration. I definetely can't enable it in games. Remember the X-fi extreme audio? X-fi brand, but no such chip. I think the Realtek chips offer X-fi features through emulation, ie the load still goes to the CPU.



Goldorak, I agree Creative cards aren't worth it, much like Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. But you're less likely to experience problems with these things, since they're the "standard". And no, EAX is bolocks. Most games don't support it, and the ones that do haven't given me the impression that it really makes much difference.

Realtek ALC889A's by the way are faster at accelerating audio than CL's X-Fi, so please provide more details than what you provided. Even the 880's where on par with X-Fi back a year or two ago, so I'm not understanding that statement.

EAX BTW makes a dramatic effect with things such as echo's in a hallway, or distance. The question is, does your game support it? Some games do, some games support older rev's like EAX 2.0, and some don't at all. The Thief series, and games like System Shock 2 that rely on sound to raise the hair on the back of your neck and you will know what I am talking about. There are some games that overdid it though. EAX can give you an advatage when playing online FPS games too by helping you judge how far away a shot came.

A fix for you is to load OpenAL since I think DX10 drops hardware acceleration, which is dumb, but we are talking about Microsoft here and they have been known to do dumb things once in a while (Vista.... cough cough..). If it is Vista one is running, they should upgrade to XP and hardware accelerated sound. Windows 7, well, OpenAL is a second best solution. Creative Lab card or not, you will not get any HW acceleration unless you have OpenAL. OpenAL is loaded by default with Creative Labs cards on Vista however (I think). I remember reading that a while back.

There is an advantage to a dedicated card and that is it should have less 'interference' than onboard audio, so if you are a musician, or if you have a really noisey motherboard (ASUS.... cough cough....), then an X-Fi may be for you.

Spoke my 2 cents.

-S