The "X-Fi" thread

Richard Dower

Gonna try keep this one maintained with reviews and info on the new soundcard due to drop Monday August 22nd.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25423

Jammer

We should have a review soon. There will be a Demo day in a well known computer shop also...

They look like they will be great, but the prices are going graphic card-esque

Ri_Nollaig

and wtf does Fatality know about sound cards?
please tell me would u honest buy a piece of hardware just cause u see its endorsed by some gamer?

Richard Dower

I want one for the 64MB of onboard RAM, and it's got some flashy blue LED on the card also.

WizZard

Ri_Nollaig wrote:

and wtf does Fatality know about sound cards?

This was my thought exactly when I saw the "Gamer Edition" X-Fi

Ri_Nollaig wrote:

please tell me would u honest buy a piece of hardware just cause u see its endorsed by some gamer?

I wouldn't, but many would. That's why endorsements are so popular and lucrative.

Admittedly it looks like a fantastic piece of hardware.

astrofool

because David Beckham is an excellent cobbler in his spare time....

gizmo

GameSpot also have a preview of the card...

The card itself is very impressive to look at, the new chip doesn’t need any cooling.

Really now, cooling on a sound card? Theres OTT and then there OTT to be honest!

Not too happy about the bundles though, if you want the onboard RAM you have to go with at least the $280 Fatal1ty board which also comes with the Front panel, something I neither want nor need, the RAM would come in pretty handy though...

Zapho

Yea does look like a stunning sound card. I was very impressed by the audigy 2 pcmcia card, but it does use up an awful lot of resources on my machine, so if they brought out a similar X-fi card I'd have no problem spending a lot of money on it

gizmo

Ah but CPU usage on the X-Fi is slightly higher than the Audigy but from what I've read its definitly worth it...

Ry

God his name is PRINTED on the damn thing FFS!

Gilgamesh

Ry wrote:

God his name is PRINTED on the damn thing FFS!

what?

gizmo

Fatal1ty has his name on the breakout box as seen here...

Then again what do you expect from the guy who endorsed a motherboard? :rolleyes:

Snowbat

Speaking of which, after Rocketboy fragged his ass, the Abit Fatal1ty was rebranded as Abit Rocketboy but only in China.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23713

Richard Dower

Two full blown reviews:

http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050818/index.html

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1850389,00.asp

gizmo

And another one from Guru3d, seems quite indepth...

Clicky!

Venom

I for one will never buy any hardware with some quake monkies name on it and again I ask how did this gimp get famious before none of the extreme gamer gear was around?

Those new sound cards are way over priced by at least 100 quid and thats just for the basic models The marketing guff that Creative seem to be spinning seems like a load of rubbish to me with comments like "it will increase your FPS by 40%". Like WTF? Not to mention the talk of getting the Doom 3 EAX patch with it when you can get the very same patch by simply downloading the doom 3 1.3 patch lol.

Tomshardware reviews are a joke as he is paid to give good reviews. The higher cpu usage also has me concerned not to mention that the next generation of windows is going the software route on and not hardware based sound decoding.

K.O.Kiki

Who cares about 64-bit Windows, though?

Venom

K.O.Kiki wrote:

Who cares about 64-bit Windows, though?

I was talking about Longhorn and Im sure alot of people will care.

WizZard

Guru3d wrote:

BTW if you need really in-depth technical information please visit Tom's Hardware, they actually copied pretty much the entire whitepaper from Creative Labs on X-Fi and pretty much presented it as their own written article.

Hehe *snigger*

Ri_Nollaig

i might pick up the basic version once it goes down in price abit atm its 145eur
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/creative_soundcards.html
i personaly dont no wat ram on a sound card is doing next u will b seeing them heatsinks and fans and more noise to the computer

Richard Dower

One more added, all links together in one post from now on:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html

http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=1792

http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050818/index.html

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1850389,00.asp

http://gear.ign.com/articles/644/644186p1.html

Ry

Ok to sum it up...

Fatal1ty branded and endorsed and sponsored globally worldwide bullsh1t and all that...:

Americans have noticed and now touched gaming...enough said.

No offence american readers i mean the corporate america.

Ry

Venom

Its seems creative did there usual magic on this card. The drivers are awful and AMD users are getting shafted bigtime. It also seems the CRYSTAL bit sounds dreadful if you are using med to high quality speakers. And to top it off the X ram is only on the top 2 cards lol.

2 years and 11 mil and this was the best creative could do?

Richard Dower

"24-bit Crystalizer" = multiband compressor, lol...i always thought they were telling porkies with there PR spin about making mp3 sound better then the original source CD, ha!

Venom...how are AMD users getting shafted?....AMD platforms experiencing problems?
I'll still buy an X-Fi, not 'cause i've bought into the hype.

Venom

It seems the xfi drivers crash like mad on AMD systems.

gizmo

Venom wrote:

The marketing guff that Creative seem to be spinning seems like a load of rubbish to me with comments like "it will increase your FPS by 40%". Like WTF?

Indeed, the benchs of Battlefield 2 (the only game to currently support X-RAM) shows it up big time.

Strange that you say the 24-bit Crystalizer is bad on medium - high end speakers, from what I've read so far its fantastic...

Meh, I'm happy with my Audigy 2 tbh...