i was gonna get a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro but after seeing all the bad press about Creative and hearing that Asus Xonar are better i thought i would pop along here and see what you lot think i should invest my hard earned cash in. Since i was going to spend £85 pound on the creative card i guess thats my budget price.
Check Ebay, the Xonar's going at ~£70 each inc. There are a few driver issues between Vista and Creative, if you're on XP it *should* work fine. If you get the Asus Xonar it just tends to work with everything.
will be using vista 64bit so i stick with xonar's, i heard theres very little difference sound quality between the xonar dx and d2x, just costs half as much so i probs be going with the xonar dx or d2 cant remember which 1 now hehe
i completely changed my now going for a Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1 just read the reviews on it and apparently its shockinly good for games
How so? It just output sounds. It won't make your games be better. A sucky game stay sucky. It's like Sony Blu-ray where they claim it makes movie better. I am sorry seeing a bad actor in more details doesn't make him better. It's the same crap. It has nothing special over the normal Creative X-Fi (just few bug fixes). Windows 7 is coming soon, knowing what Creative did for the X-Fi with Vista, don't expect any drivers, especially if they release a new sound card. Now technically speaking Windows Vista drivers should work under Windows 7 as it's the same core, and same driver architecture preatty much. However, the same was for Windows 2000 to XP, and for reason Creative did everything they can to not install under Windows 2000 (ONLY Windows XP SP2, not even SP1). So, I would not bet it will work under Windows 7, too risky I say. But then again, it's your money, your choose. I too can find you wonderful reviews on the X-Fi. This is why I got it. Oh boy, that was the stupidest purchase of my life. And I have there in my computer, reminding me how stupid I was. Reviews is one thing, actually real world test is another. Now I look at the company chip maker (so Creative in your case) and see what people are saying, what problem is shows. Then I look at communities like this to ensure that the product works properly. Doing so, so far I did not fell into anything crappy, and I always get amazing as it passes my expectations.
I'm not sure about this particular card, but soundcards can serve an important function. I had a soundblaster xgamer for a long time and then switched to onboard sound, the sound became more tinny and the base response wasn't nearly as good. Plus sound cards tend to have dedicated chips that can handle such things as surround sound and other features better than onboard solutions. Then there is the flatout quality of the DAC chip and the firmware it uses to convert audio into sound. In my opinion having bad sound can really ruin the immersion of a game. I'm curious what was wrong with your creative-xfi? As of right now I'm using a creative professional soundcard a 1414 with an 1820M breakout box. That's a $500+ soundcard or DAC as they're called. But it's meant for music production and has a whole host of features a gamer doesn't need. It does blow any gaming soundcard out of the water, but then again I have studio monitors, studio headphones and a partially treated room.
Well Creative's drivers don't work for Vista 64Bit. Also there was a guy who modded the drivers trying to help the people when Creative did nothing. What did they do? they threatened to sue him. TBH they lost ALOT of customers from that day forward. And still had no drivers for Vista....... Thats why the Xonar is their only true competitor. And personally I think it sounds better.
meh alot like saying why bother having a colour tv? or why bother having the say 30FPS over 20 FPS better sound = better gaming experience, well at least for me anyway
The major problem as of Windows Vista (and probably also Windows 7 and its successors) is that the audio stack is now completely software-based (DirectSound3D is gone). Meaning that dedicated audio hardware, at least for gaming purposes, has become mostly obsolete. It's actually the main reason Creative started supporting OpenAL. In theory there's now not much difference between onboard sound and a dedicated soundcard, although better D/A converters still can give a dedicated card an advantage. By the way, the Xonar series emulates EAX 5.0 in software, but this is only interesting for Windows XP, since EAX requires DirectSound3D.
maybe in theory but my ears tell me different, besides thats the first time i heard and i been looking thro a fair few dedicated audiophile websites and where im getting my info from as i know next to nothing about sound. Got a link where you got your info from?
Don't get me wrong, there is a difference in sound quality from the onboard and dedicated sound card. But that's it. It COULD, give you up to 5% (real-time not benchmark) increase in FPS in your games, because your CPU is more free to run the game rather than the game and sound. You will enjoy better gaming, and listen to music. The Xonar IS a dedicated sound card. But what the X-Fi fails is that some features like CMSS-3D and Christalization are software based. So basically, it uses more of your CPU. Enabling them will match somewhat the impressive sound of the Xonar, but disabling them, then there is a step. The ASUS sound card doesn't use software only hardware, it's own hardware that is. So your CPU is much more free for the same even better sound output than the X-Fi. The X-Fi HAS drivers for Vista 32 and 64-bit... but do they work? meh. It works yes, but can freeze the sound card. By freeze is that you lose sound output until you completely turn off the computer and turn it back on. To add to the list, it drastically slows down windows boot, crackles/pop when your CPU is fully loaded (which is NOT enjoyable in games!!!!), crashes (lucky Vista can restart the drivers automatically). Here is the sum up, PCI version of the X-Fi hates anything that was released after the nForce 3 and equivalent dated Intel chipset and other. Anything after it doesn't work properly. The PCI-Express version currently works almost smoothly with today's hardware, but shows difficulties on OC computers, and some people reported issues with the latest nforce chipset. So I see the story happening again, as they didn't fix the problem just hacked it. Now you might say, "yea right, the drivers can't be THAT bad". Oh yea! This is the latest drivers disk I ordered (and had to pay!!!!) from Creative to have a the drivers and all the crap with it, to supposedly designed (with Vista drivers) to run under Vista. See for yourself: http://www.helpweaver.com/X-Fi/setup.html (this is JUST the setup you are greeted with.) It's unresponsive, buttons don't even work, and they are so lazy they can't even adjust the shifted next button on the setup, which I circle with the mouse. And to too things over it says it's not Vista compatible when you execute the autorun. Also notice how every dialog is a heavy .exe that gets executed. Also notice how the setup frooze (even that they can't make it work!) and when I kill it, it restarts again! WTF! Now you might think that the "Auzen X-Fi Prelude 7.1" escape that. Well don't make the chip, they manufacture it. They do some tweaks on the card to get the drivers from creative to make it crash and tweaks, but the main issues are still there. Xonar is THE best choice. Correctly prices, it's quality, it just works. Everything it comes with works perfectly fine under Vista 32 and 64-bit. I would like to add, What is EAX? I mean I know what it is. But virtually no games supports it, and the ones that do, when you disable it simply uses Dolby technology (which the XONAR FULLY SUPPORT (not the X-Fi, X-Fi is only EAX nothing else), or the game own system. So you actually close doors by getting teh X-Fi. And beside even thus you fall onto a EAX only game, the Xonar fully supports it. And what is more disgusting is that it apparently does a better job than the X-Fi,
azrael- is actually correct, however, Windows 7 offers a an improved technology which should open doors. However what is wrong, is that you actually do hear a big difference between onBoard and a dedicated sound card, that was not affected. Now why Microsoft did this? Well I don't blame them, I mean the sound card was chaotic thanks to some companies, especially Creative, where their sound card is hardware specific. Meaning, poorly tested, so some hardware configuration will make the sound card not work. This annoyed everyone. Well not this new system makes everyone happy, especially computer manufacture companies, but makes the audio enthusiasts not quite happy. However, work around exists such having, like on Macs a sound card on firewire or using OpenAL.
Actually, EAX and e.g. Dolby Surround (and/or DTS) aren't mutually exclusive, quite to the contrary actually. Dolby/DTS gives you positional audio, but that is only part of EAX's feature set. EAX creates sound scapes (occlusion etc.) by processing audio in hardware (on Creative soundcards). On top of that you get positional audio too. Without hardware EAX support the CPU needs to perform all these tasks. Granted, CPU performance has gone way up the last couple of years, but I still would prefer dedicated audio hardware to do these tasks. As for Creative's drivers, they definitely few and far between. I haven't had the pleasure of using an X-Fi board myself, so I can't comment on the driver quality, but my Audigy also has had its share of problems, as well as probably using the oldest driver in my system.
For a 2.1 system, I would say definitely. I have a 2.1 sound system and i do enjoy listening to music such as Jazz, Classical, and more. And there is a big difference between onBoard and dedicated. The X-Fi is really a tweaked and slightly OC Audigy chip. Some of the issues with the X-Fi are identical to the Audigy. As the comment on EAX, yes you are correct, but the latest EAX version, Creative keeps it propitiatory. Many speculates at it's a question of time before Creative sue ASUS. Some believe they won't do it as it's emulation, others says that Creative feels it's imagine is bad enough.
I'd say you should have a "proper" stereo amplifier and speakers, not something designed for a PC, then you can really justify a good card.
