I need a new sound card! What’s the best sound card out atm? I was looking at the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro?
I like my X-Fi, but frankly the drivers are so god awful that I'd never buy another one. It depends on what you do the most. If it's games go for the X-Fi, if it's music/movies go for something else.
I'd say the X-Fi, I only use mine for games (bought the Fatal1ty1 version with the breakout box to have all the necessary knobs and connections at the front) and I can't fault the quality of the X-Fi, the sound is simply fantasic. I use a pair of Steelsound gaming headphones (the one with the retractable mic, can't remember the model number, 5v2 I think) and the surround sound effect through a standard pair of headphones is just wonderful. I play iTunes through my 5.1 speaker set and the music sounds okay to me and I'm not aware of having any driver issues, in fact the reason I bought the X-Fi was because my Audigy2 card was having the stuttering problem with Half-Life2 when it first came out. Upgrading to the X-Fi solved the problem but I do believe that there are still issues with Vista and the X-Fi, I think its the EAX side of things thats the problem. I still use XP myself, Vista sound like to much of pain in the backside at the moment, and can I just say - dual boot? Are you a glutton for punishment? Its bad enough to have your resources hogged by one O/S but two? Seems to much like a recipe for grief for my liking. Good luck to you, I reckon you'll need it.
What’s wrong with dual boot? I may have named it wrong or something but my PC starts up and I simply click XP or Vista and it loads either one as it would if you had 1 O/S. I have 1 HDD with vista and 1 HDD with XP on btw.
Im a gamer so is it sensible to just buy the Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer @ £88.00 or wait and spend £211 on Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro with X-Fi Console I mean are they the same cards? because they look like it!
