PCI-Express X-Fi cards

[GotNoRice]

So what is the deal with the current lineup of PCI-Express X-Fi Cards?

On the low end there is this:
Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102017

But from what I’ve read that is not a “Real” X-Fi similar to the PCI versions in that it doesn’t do EAX, etc in hardware. The miniscule little chip it has would seem to support that conclusion.

Beyond that there are are the various Fatal1ty models such as this:
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102019

Now my first question is, what is the deal with the plastic (or whatever it is) cage that surrounds the card? What purpose does it serve? The cynic inside me would guess that the cards probably use a similar miniscule processor as the Xtreme Audio and the card is probably also nerfed compared to its PCI counterparts, which of course no one would pay $100+ for so they hid the card inside a plastic shell so no one would notice. Anyone ever taken it off to see what is really inside?

I’m currently using two soundcards, an Audigy2 ZS, which I use as my primary card because it can do up to EAX4 in hardware, and my EMU0404 which has a better DAC. I route the Digital output from the Audigy into the 0404 and get something of the best of both worlds. I’d like to eventually upgrade to a crossfire motherboard though, and would like to replace the functionality of both cards with a single X-Fi card, or at the very least replace my PCI Audigy2 ZS with a PCI-E X-Fi and perhaps continue to use my 0404 simply as a DAC. But to be honest I’d rather stick with my old Audigy2 ZS than some POS half-ass X-Fi that can’t even do EAX in hardware.

I’m sort of sad that they haven’t come out with anything between the Xtreme Audio and the Fatal1ty cards, something of a Mid-end card that provided real hardware accelerated audio. Why does their PCI-E lineup seem so weak compared to their PCI cards?

 

[ajhodges]

The titanium X-fi is the real deal (hardware audio processing). The Xtreme audio, like you said, is a POS.
There have been quite a few reviews on the PCI-e x-fi and they've all been pretty positive. I would pick one up myself if I had the cash to spare.
The reason why there is such a small selection for PCI-e is because it's still relatively new technology. The PCI-e titanium x-fi just came out like a few months ago. There will probably be others down the line.

 

[Cyrilix]

I think it's crazy that some of you still regard "hardware accelerated sound" as "the real deal". Please, that is simply a gimmick to get you to buy the card. The difference is minimal, and will only become more and more minimal.

 

[screwballl]

I got the XtremeMusic but I don't think it is sold anymore, it is the inbetween card you mentioned... You should be able to find one of the Xfi platinum cards for under $100 that will outperform any of the Audisy or other cards you have.
The only other suggestion would be the Asus Xonar cards which are rated very high...

 

[GotNoRice]

I think it's crazy that some of you still regard "hardware accelerated sound" as "the real deal". Please, that is simply a gimmick to get you to buy the card. The difference is minimal, and will only become more and more minimal.

How could you possibly say that? Do you just not play any games that use Hardware accelerated audio? Now if the game itself doesn’t have hardware accelerated audio then I’d agree that it will make little difference but games such as Battlefield 2 and World of Warcraft that use EAX, the difference is night and day. Using software audio after using Hardware accelerated audio in those games sounds muffled and blurry, almost like something is wrong. I’ve tried to do without my Audigy2 ZS on numerous occasions, using my EMU0404 by itself as well as using my onboard Realtek HD audio and both sent me back to my Audigy within days.

I got the XtremeMusic but I don't think it is sold anymore, it is the inbetween card you mentioned... You should be able to find one of the Xfi platinum cards for under $100 that will outperform any of the Audisy or other cards you have.
The only other suggestion would be the Asus Xonar cards which are rated very high...

The XtremeMusic is a PCI card, this thread is about PCI-E cards. I’d agree that they have, or at least had, a decent PCI lineup of X-Fi cards but I already have way too many PCI cards and I want my next soundcard to be a PCI-Express card.

 

[Cyrilix]

How could you possibly say that? Do you just not play any games that use Hardware accelerated audio? Now if the game itself doesn’t have hardware accelerated audio then I’d agree that it will make little difference but games such as Battlefield 2 and World of Warcraft that use EAX, the difference is night and day. Using software audio after using Hardware accelerated audio in those games sounds muffled and blurry, almost like something is wrong. I’ve tried to do without my Audigy2 ZS on numerous occasions, using my EMU0404 by itself as well as using my onboard Realtek HD audio and both sent me back to my Audigy within days.

EAX != hardware-accelerated audio. When I talk about hardware-accelerated audio, I talk SPECIFICALLY about the aspect of reducing your CPU load by offloading work to the sound card rather than a Q6600 that you could've purchased for a bit more than $200.

 

[Stupac]

Xf-titanium is the real deal.

Pros:
PCI-e (no 4gb ram problems)
Great Vista drivers
crushes my old audigy 2 zs and onboard sound
nice front panel if u get the champ series
dolby digital live
fantastic sound

Cons
Expensive
why didn't this come out a year ago

 

[screwballl]

heres the difference:

2 PCI lanes equals 1 PCIe lane.

1 lane on the PCI express lane equals twice the speed, bandwidth and so on as PCI itself.

AGP 1x = PCIe x1, twice the speed of a PCI lane.
AGP 8x = 16 times PCI speed and sams as PCIe x8
PCIe x16 = 32 times the speed/bandwidth of standard PCI slot.
PCIe 2.0 x16 = 34 times the speed/bandwidth of PCI

So unless you ran out of PCI slots, there should be no need to limit yourself ONLY to a PCIe x1 slot.

 

[djoye]

I've been eyeballing the X-fi Titanium PCI-E card but I'm not sure if it's worth it since I have an Audigy 2 ZS and it seems to be doing just fine. Don't games have to specifically support EAX 5.0 to make use of it? I couldn't find a list of EAX5 games.

There was a night and day different between the sound quality in games when I went from Realtek/onboard audio to my Audigy2 but I'm not yet sure if going to the X-fi will have any benefits.

These were the only benchmarks I found:
http://www.gamingshogun.com/Article/1831/Sound_Blaster_X-Fi_Titanium_Fatal1ty_Review.html

The variance is so small it's stupid; those numbers are all too close to even be concerned about performance. I just want to know if there's going to be an audible difference between the Audigy2 EAX4 and the X-fi EAX5.

 

[screwballl]

if you have picky ears and quality speakers then yes... otherwise no difference.

 

[GotNoRice]

heres the difference: NONE

PCI = PCIe x1

1 lane on the PCI express lane equals the exact same speed, bandwidth and so on as PCI itself.

AGP 8x = 8 times PCI speed
PCIe x16 = 16 times the speed/bandwidth of standard PCI slot.

So unless you ran out of PCI slots, there should be no need to limit yourself ONLY to a PCIe x1 slot.

Wow you really have no idea what you’re talking about do you.

PCI (32bit/33Mhz) is a parallel bus that shares 133MB/sec bandwidth among all the cards that are connected. A PCI-E 1x slot is 250MB/sec and that is dedicated to that slot and not shared with anything else.

AGP8x = 2133MB/sec which would be 16x the bandwidth of a PCI slot.

Not that any of this is pertinent to this discussion, but WTF are you talking about? Lol

In my original post, which I suppose you probably never read, I said I’m looking to upgrade to a crossfire motherboard. PCI slots are becoming increasingly scarce while PCI-E slots are the norm now. I have a PCI PhysX card which I’d like to keep as well as a PCI SCSI controller for two of my 15,000rpm SCSI drives. That’s already two PCI cards that I can’t easily part with and finding a crossfire board with more than two PCI slots is extremely challenging; assuming I’d even want to dictate my entire motherboard purchase based on nothing more than its PCI slot configuration.

So basically yeah, I am running out of PCI slots, though I’m glad you’re apparently satisfied with your PCI X-Fi.

 

[Balthazor]

X-Fi sound cards (real ones - some are branded as X-Fi but don't have the actual X-Fi chip, such as the Extreme Audio ones) will take advantage of any game with OpenAL, DirectSound, and DirectSound3D.

EAX are simply extensions - extra effects - added onto game sounds, and these can be processed through OpenAL or DirectSound3D. Using an X-Fi will allow you to hear any level of EAX effects, up through 5.0, the latest version. Creative will use incentives to developers to get them to use EAX in games, and so this will not go away any time soon.

Vista prevents DirectSound3D from being hardware accelerated, but Creative works around this by translating DirectSound3D calls into OpenAL calls, which can be hardware accelerated. This works for many games on Vista that use DirectSound3D. (This translation, called ALchemy by Creative, works fairly well; but in the instances where it doesn't, it only means that you won't get hardware accelerated sound; and without that capability you will be limited to Stereo sound on these older games that don't work properly with ALchemy.) Since DirectSound3D is no longer supported by Microsoft on Vista you can expect to see fewer and fewer developers using this API.

Games that use some other sound engine - like RAD audio or something like that - will not be hardware accelerated, although the sound will output through your sound card. Most of these sound engines support multi-channel sound, but just do so through software.

The Titanium is a very nice card, I highly recommend it for gaming.

 

[Balthazor]

As a further aside, EAX - Environmental Audio Extensions - are added by game developers, not Creative. It is a relatively simple way for developers to add different audio effects and filters that are processed by your X-Fi card. EAX 5.0 supports up to 128 simultaneous 'voices', with up to 4 effects per voice (for instance, muffling a sound if there is an intervening object, such as a wall, between 'you' and the sound; or adding a particular echo effect if you are in a sewer.)

Lower levels of EAX have fewer 'voices' or fewer effects per voice.

You can definitely hear a difference playing a game with EAX and a proper sound card vs. turning the EAX off.

But other than that, being 'hardware accelerated' just means the sound card is doing the limited amount of audio processing that would otherwise be done by your CPU. Unless a game uses EAX you won't hear a sound difference between 'hardware accelerated' and software audio in games. Your CPU might take a hit with software audio, but not much of one, generally, especially on multi-core systems.