Hello Bit I've given up fighting with my Audigy 2 zs's drivers and am looking at a new sound card. I've been looking at the Asus Xonar D2 or the Auzentech X-fi Prelude. I'd like real coax digital outputs, maybe optical to connect to my Z-5500s. I enjoy listening to music on my computer, also playing games, and decent sound is always nice. Is EAX support worth the creative bloatware of drivers? Cheers
EAX is not worth it... Most game that support EAX also support their own or other technologies. For sure you may fall onto a game that only supports EAX (Creative paid them), but probably it won't be a 80% or above game, so I don't think it would really mater. Also if you don't have surround sound, it is useless in the most part. I have an X-fi XtreamMusic and it is a PAIN (under XP and Vista 64-bit), due to the bad Creative drivers. Between the Audogy 2 and the X-fi, their is no major difference, (its the same chip, just OC'ed, tweaked a bit, and added 1-2 features). The 24-bit crystallization is pure crap (ok well, not as advertise, lets say)... it just improved your MP3 up to 5% Max. In my opinion, if you love your current sound card and want and an small upgrade, go with the Auzentech X-fi. If you want something that is better, at all aspects (but don't have EAX), and want to enjoy a better experience in your music, go with ASUS Xonar D2 (PCI or PCI-E (NOTE: PCI-E require addition power to the card))
I have owned an xfi fatality with the onboard ram and the xfi processor, I now own the xonar d2 pci... They sound nearly the same, the xonar has better analog output and the xfi has better eax and does free up the cpu, which gave me 1 to 2 fps with my x4200+ but did nothing with my x6000+. There is over 200 pages of users having issues with xfi cards and creative has yet to reply, it also has issues with vista which the xonar excels at from what I hear. I did alot of reasearch if your using a asus mobo, sli, or crossfire I would stay away from creative, if not I would go with the xfi if your gonna use optical, if analog I still pick the xonar even though its about 40 bucks more most places, it does sound better than the xfi analog and the same optical, I love my xonar very happy
