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Do Creative's drivers still kill Windows?

T

tranCendenZ

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 6, 2004
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I was looking at getting an ASIO capable card with good sound quality that was also decent for games, preferably with a breakout box.

The new Audigy 4 PRO caught my eye...

One problem though, I've been using a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz for years, and it is as stable as a rock. It also has intuitive mixer controls, and good sound quality.

Last time I owned a Creative card, it was an SB Live and it made my Windows unstable, putting in the Santa Cruz fixed all the problems.

So do Creative's drivers still suck? The Audigy 4 PRO looks like just the card I want, I'm just afraid I'm gonna go back to the poor drivers I experienced with my former SB Live. Thanx. It will be similar to the Audigy 2 ZS in terms of drivers.

The other competitor is the M-Audio Delta 66 (or maybe Audiophile 192), but it doesn't look gaming friendly at all.

P.S. - If anyone can post pics of the Creative Mixer that would be cool.
 
Uggh.. SBLive...

I had a SBLive and a Via kt133 mobo, so I can feel your pain. As for nowadays, anything A2 or higher will give you fairly decent music quality on top of what you'd expect from gaming performance. Coming from a Audigy1 (which died, which turned into a blessing :) ), my new A2zs Platinum ($200 plus $75!! rebate from Compusa a couple weeks ago) is a beast for regular music playing ( foobar or Winamp with appropriate plugins).

General concensous is the A2's are pretty darn good compared to the old santa cruise nowadays. Drivers do their thing (just install what you need) and haven't caused me ANY issues so far on my Nforce150 mobo.
 
Drivers do their thing (just install what you need)
Click to expand...

exactly what he said creative is still fond of their bloatware because they think its totally sweet when you can bog down even the fastest of the x86 computers. I'd stick with the basics including the usual Creative mixer.
 
In my opinion the audigy drivers and apps are still way to bloated, but after a couple of years of A2, and a recent shift to the A4, I can say that I've had nothing resembling a stability issue with them (in fact the a4 set "feel" even more polished and solid than the a2 ones).

With the A2 my preference was to only install the windows drivers and then use the ctpanel app to manage them (ctpanel had a nice clean tabbed single-window interface for eax/speakersettings/surround mixer etc), rather than the fancy but cubersome multi-window management setup.

Unfortunately ctpanel doesn't seem to be included with the A4 drivers.
 
I avoid all creative products like the plague... they are never quite right. I have their speakers, mp3 players, sound cards... there is something annoying about each one, and I am through with it.
 
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