X-Fi Titanium vs. Xonar DX

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hotbrass

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I have a little Christmas money and I've been itching to get a new sound card. I'm debating between the Creative X-Fi Titanium and the ASUS Xonar DX. I'm planning on running it on Logitech G51 speakers and putting it in my Ultra Microfly SFF case (so it has to fit). It will used primarily for gaming (COD4/5, CS:S, etc.), music, and maybe a movie every now and then. Also, I'm running 64-bit Vista (I've read about some driver issues). The egg has the X-Fi for $135 and the Xonar for $90.

So is the X-Fi worth the extra money? I like the fact that I don't have to use an extra power connector for the X-fi, but it's not a big deal. So what do you all think?
 
I am in the same exact boat. I am torn between the Asus D2x Xonar Sound card. Its pcie.
Or the Xfi Titanium Fatality Pro card. I can get them price wise within 10 dollars of each other. The Asus is pricier. I play On vista. I have nice 5.1 Logitech Speaker set too.
and Play a ton of Pc games. I probably have too many pc games lol.

So to the hardocp masses.. What do you think? help us out here!
 
The asus dx seems to be a better choice.
sounds better for those that tried it.
 
After reading up on it I decided to jump on the deal that Zipzoomfly has for it. its 164.99 then after a 30 mIR its 134.99. And thats the best Deal on the web right now.
 
Haven't heard the X-Fi, but I own the D2X and it is a very, very nice card. The software and drivers are also much better than anything I have ever seen from Creative.

The only other card that rivals the D2X is the Auzentech Prelude, but it is more expensive. The D2X does very good with games and simply blows any Creative card out of the water when it comes to music and movies.
 
One thing you should know/realize about Windows Vista and presumably Windows 7 is that gaming audio, if it attempts to use EAX or directsound is butchered quite significantly. At least that's what I recall. It's basically to make Windows more stable.

Creative has created alchemy, which interprets EAX output from games (mainly old games) and has software (alchemy) to take those calls and send them to your sound card. Asus does the same thing for EAX above 2.0 in windows xp, and for all OpenAl and EAX in vista, but for asus it's embedded in the drivers while Alchemy is a standalone program that only works for certain games, both require software "emulation" to some extent, hitting your fps to varying degrees (not significant normally). OpenAl should be hardware accelerated by Creative cards on any version of Windows

If i understand all the changes correctly, only hardware accelerated sound would come through the use of OpenAl... So i am not entirely sure how big the support of OpenAl is for games that you play or hope to play.

This played a huge role in my adventures to try find an audio card, but I ended up just going for a usb dac because quite honestly... it's confusing when you consider gaming and I have no idea how the chips will fall.

Microsoft has their own cross platform audio scheme, I think it's called XAudio 2, which can't be hardward accelerated by soundcards. So if games are ported from Xbox360 to PC, they would probably use this technology, which renders creatives edge in gaming to nothing... at least for those specific games

Sound quality wise, I am pretty sure the xonar wins (I do remember reading some comparison between prelude, which uses creative-chips, versus the asus cards). Prelude having better components than most, if not all creative sound cards.

I guess the big point for creative cards is the *potential* for hardware accelerated sound for gaming (OpenAl since you're already on vista); otherwise, the decision is simple... xonar

Apologies if this is not all correct. I have been trying to figure out more details about all of this, so i could be wrong about things, but the points I raise are worth looking into if gaming, Windows Vista and beyond, and hardware accelerated technologies for gaming really are affecting your decision process
 
I recently went from an x-fi Fatal1ty to the Xonar D2X and the sound quality is much much better on the Xonar. Was never really happy with the x-fi sound quality and my new tube headphone amp really revealed how dull the x-fi sounded.

I don't notice anything being slower in games with the Xonar D2X. Just better sound. I am on Vista 64 and most of the games i play now are Openal anyways so if you are on xp it will probably be better with the x-fi if you are gaming primarily.

The xonar driver/control panel is only a 11-12 mb download so it also saves me from the Creative bloat.
 
Atech said:
For gaming the the choice is clear: The X-Fi.
Click to expand...

It isn't really all that clear. If you want bloatware and terribly over-priced hardware go with Creative. If you want an alternative with very good hardware components and better software support then go with the Xonar.

Creative should really have this soundcard thing down to a science by now and yet they continually produce under-performing hardware.
 
runnin17 said:
It isn't really all that clear. If you want bloatware and terribly over-priced hardware go with Creative. If you want an alternative with very good hardware components and better software support then go with the Xonar.

Creative should really have this soundcard thing down to a science by now and yet they continually produce under-performing hardware.
Click to expand...

Oh really:
"The only problem is that I did not notice much of a difference in sound between the software/32-voice mode and the DS3D GX powered Ultra 128-voice mode. They sounded nearly identical, in fact. One of the things the X-Fi can do is EAX 5.0 on the fly (with about a 15% performance penalty), and the immersion in the game is so very alluring. You can hear things like support pillars blocking sound, gunfire ricochets, and that disturbing hiss of a grenade. You don't hear that with DS3D GX. It does do what it's supposed to do, subvert EAX detection, but then again, it doesn't actually do any of the more interesting EAX effects either. I guess I'll wait for Asus to reverse engineer EAX 5, or wish for Creative to open source EAX."

I guess not being up to par is better? :confused:
 
Atech said:
Oh really:
"The only problem is that I did not notice much of a difference in sound between the software/32-voice mode and the DS3D GX powered Ultra 128-voice mode. They sounded nearly identical, in fact. One of the things the X-Fi can do is EAX 5.0 on the fly (with about a 15% performance penalty), and the immersion in the game is so very alluring. You can hear things like support pillars blocking sound, gunfire ricochets, and that disturbing hiss of a grenade. You don't hear that with DS3D GX. It does do what it's supposed to do, subvert EAX detection, but then again, it doesn't actually do any of the more interesting EAX effects either. I guess I'll wait for Asus to reverse engineer EAX 5, or wish for Creative to open source EAX."

I guess not being up to par is better? :confused:
Click to expand...

Where exactly did you get that info from. Sounds like a Creative fanboy to me.
 
Lol. You can't just put up quotes without the source. I can do that too!

"Creative cards have shitty sound quality unless you mod them. God has spoken!"
 
I had a X-Fi Prelude previously and after about a year or so of using it I finally got sick of the crackle and switched to Xonar DX. Price is good, sound is good and with a decent quad, even for gaming, you won't see much performance hit even if it uses some CPU cycles for sound. Plus, it's PCI-E.
 
Atech said:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/asus-xonar-d2x-review/

Now your link :D
Click to expand...

So I read the review and it pretty much is a praise fest for the D2X. For anyone who seriously thinks that they will be using XP for the next few years then be my guest and buy a Creative bloatware soundcard.

However, as the review points out, the Xonar D2X is the new reference standard for hi-end audio. Pretty much Atech just shot himself in the foot with his comments. I personally own the D2X and while I don't play as many games as most of the people on HardForum, I can say that the D2X performs so well in so many situations that you really can't go wrong with it.

The software is nice, the drivers are compatible and the card just simply has tons of features. The hi-end DAC components and all the other bells and whistles blow anything Creative has to offer out of the water.
 
Creative bloatware? Do you people just click the "Next" button through the software install or what? Sure, they offer a lot of useless crap but you can fix that by telling the installation to not install that stuff.

Burr-Brown is definitely good stuff, though.
 
runnin17 said:
So I read the review and it pretty much is a praise fest for the D2X. For anyone who seriously thinks that they will be using XP for the next few years then be my guest and buy a Creative bloatware soundcard.

However, as the review points out, the Xonar D2X is the new reference standard for hi-end audio. Pretty much Atech just shot himself in the foot with his comments. I personally own the D2X and while I don't play as many games as most of the people on HardForum, I can say that the D2X performs so well in so many situations that you really can't go wrong with it.

The software is nice, the drivers are compatible and the card just simply has tons of features. The hi-end DAC components and all the other bells and whistles blow anything Creative has to offer out of the water.
Click to expand...

As long as you don't use anymore than EAX 2.0...then you might as well use onboard.
And anyone who has ever tried BF2 with EXA5.0 will nod their heads to this(requoted):

""The only problem is that I did not notice much of a difference in sound between the software/32-voice mode and the DS3D GX powered Ultra 128-voice mode. They sounded nearly identical, in fact. One of the things the X-Fi can do is EAX 5.0 on the fly (with about a 15% performance penalty), and the immersion in the game is so very alluring. You can hear things like support pillars blocking sound, gunfire ricochets, and that disturbing hiss of a grenade. You don't hear that with DS3D GX. It does do what it's supposed to do, subvert EAX detection, but then again, it doesn't actually do any of the more interesting EAX effects either. I guess I'll wait for Asus to reverse engineer EAX 5, or wish for Creative to open source EAX.""
 
Do you not realize that the Xonar does emulate EAX 5.0? Or do you just want to continue promoting over-rated Creative crap.
 
The only thing i thought after i put the Xonar D2X in my machine was "why the hell i have been protecting my x-fi Fatal1ty these last years?".
The sound quality is just much better on the Xonar, and i don't find there's any performance decrease in any sense (i do have a good pc though), and i don't have to switch between the silly sound modes.

Yes yes BF2 and EAX5.
Sorry i don't play it anymore. I do play alot of games from wow and crysis to iracing and to me the sound in those games are much better than with the x-fi. And i can say there's definitely no performance decrease. I thought i was happy with the x-fi and also promoted it to others as a great card. At its time when launched it might have been good, but there are much better cards out now.

A new Asus Xonar Essence STX just came too, so i would put x-fi on my list pretty much only if i was playing EAX5 games in xp.
 
Well, I decided to go with the Xonar DX. Newegg had it one sale for $65 shipped after rebate. From what I've read it is just as good, if not better, than the X-fi without the bloated drivers and extra software Creative seems to favor. The Xonar seems to be the best as far as price/performance goes. When paired with a new set of Logitech G51s, I think I should be pleased. Thanks for the input all.
 
While I've never used the Xonar card I have to say that Creative seems to have improved significantly in the bloatware department. The latest Vista X-Fi drivers from Creative's site don't have any extra crap and work just fine.

I guess your decision really comes down to hardware quality. I use the digital out to my receiver most of the time so I don't really care about the analog stuff.
 
Atech said:
Did you not realise it does a piss poor job of it?
Click to expand...

i have an x-fi music and a xonar dx in my pc. the xonar has better sound quality. the x-fi has much better 3d sound. in eax5 games that i play (ut3, bf2142) the 3d sound field is much much larger on the x-fi. the xonar is like playing in a large room and the x-fi is like playing in a gymnasium. also the xonar does give frame rate slowdown in very heavy sound situations. (amd 6000, 8800gts 512 sli)
also an x-fi puts out more power-useful for headphones. a xonar needs a small cmoy type amp to keep up power-wise

gamer- get an x-fi
music/movies- get a xonar

or be like me and have both!
 
phide said:
Under-performing in what way?
Click to expand...

You are kidding right. Creative should be the first company with stable drivers no matter what the situation. They have become so arrogant about their products that they have stopped caring about providing good drivers and decent software.

Instead they just market the crap out of their cards and once people buy them they don't care b/c they have the customers money.

phide said:
That's debatable.
Click to expand...

Of course it is debatable! I said according to the review. Seriously, if you are going to throw out such a vague statement as "that's debatable" then how about you debate it?
 
I've never had a problem with Creative's drivers or hardware, and I don't see why people hate on them.

runnin17, you stated that Creative puts out under-performing hardware because they don't provide good drivers, which doesn't make sense. I don't doubt that their software could use some work, but the hardware is great. For the record, I've also never had a driver crash, snap-crackle-pop issue, or other audio problem with my Audigy 2 or X-Fi. From my viewpoint, therefore, I got my money's worth, and the software seems very stable on Vista x64. This is not true for everyone.

Anyway, the OP has made his decision and this isn't a debate thread. Enjoy your new card hotbrass.
 
Thanks again for all the input. I didn't mean for this to be such an intense debate, but I think it's good for people to discuss competing hardware. I really appreciate those of you who have both cards and made comments. As Antimatter said, I have made my decision, but I wouldn't mind seeing the discussion continue for the sake of those who are, or will be, in the same situation I was in.
 
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