X-FI Fatal1ty

I just had a question... apparently the 64mb of X-Ram on the card of the Fatal1ty X-fi series will increase your framerates but it is application specific and thus not supported by a lot of games.

Does anyone have this card and are there really any benefits to this over the Xtremegamer version?

i believe there are very few- if any- games that actually use the xram. i have heard that maybe the bf2 and bf2142 games use xram but i have heard also that they dont so im not sure...

Not worth upgrading from another X-fi, especially if the other x-fi already has hardware acceleration (not one of the software-based x-fi cards).

well im getting a new rig so i dont have anything right now

I have the Fatal1ty edition card and its a good card. As for the Xram issue, I have no idea if any of my games play it, but I would think if a game did support it you would see it advertised somewhere on the box or splash screen logo going: "Xram powered" or something cliche like that. I know some games like Bioshock recommend a Xfi series card, but it doesnt say which one so I doubt Xram is being used. I would make sure though that whatever Xfi you get that its hardware accelerated and I know the Fatil1ty is hardware accelerated

The X-RAM only matters for games that say they support it... but supposedly any game that uses OpenAL will make full use of it anyway as it's built into the architecture. So, future games (especially those made with full Vista support) will benefit, and anything that claims to work better on X-Fi has a good chance of being X-RAM accelerated.

Otherwise, no, it's been tested and there's no benefit whatsoever if your game can't take advantage of it. Unless you do own such games, the Fatal1ty series is only beneficial for the other features the card may have, and the X-RAM is just an extra shiny object on the card.

What about the problems I keep hearing about the X-Fi extremegamer with Vista 64? Those issues resolved yet?

I bought the Fatal1ty because it was on sale and had the IO Drive dingus for the 5¼" bay.

The X-Fi drivers for Vista x64 aren't all that great (surprise surprise)- the issues I've had w/my card in Vista mostly pertain to the audio console (gaming/entertainment/recording modes, taking several minutes to load) and playback stopping during normal music listening. Games are pretty functional, although occaisionally, the driver module will stop responding and I have to either switch modes to regain sound or reboot.

Any difference I had in framerates w/BF2 or 2142 was negligible (comparing to my Audigy and X-Mystique)

Personally, if I didn't want/need the IO dingus and already owned an XtremeGamer, I wouldn't purchase the Fata1ity. The benefits don't really outweigh the extra cost associated with buying a new card, imo.

m0unds said:

Any difference I had in framerates w/BF2 or 2142 was negligible (comparing to my Audigy and X-Mystique)

Click to expand...

That's not surprising to me.

It's been my experience between onboard audio solutions using the Intel AC97+ Realtek or AD vs. Live vs. Audigy vs. Fortissimo III vs. X-Fi.

The onboard solutions suck frame rates, at least on my old Northwood P4. But as soon as you step to ANY card with hardware acceleration in sound you get a huge boost, and anything beyond that are tiny percentages. The Live, Audigy, Fortissimo, all seemed about on the same performance level once you make that initial jump from no hardware to hardware.

X-RAM is probably so minimal I wouldn't even spend $10 extra for it.