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Someone Say Yes.

J

JustinSane

2[H]4U
Joined
Jun 29, 2005
Messages
2,425
Should I hit the order button for an X-Fi Fatality sound card? Damn it, I can't decide. Someone say something.
 
Unless you have use for breakout box, then get the cheap one. The high end one is a waste otherwise.
 
If you want better sounds in games, then yes.

If you want music to sound better, then no, get an EMU0404 or EMU1212M.
 
lol, I'd wait if you're using Windows 64, if you're using windows xp 32bit, then yes get the X-Fi, it's better then most cards out there.
 
You might be better getting an audigy2 + upgraded graphics card. I really don't see the point in spending $200 on a soundcard to get a marginal framerate improvement.
 
IanG said:
You might be better getting an audigy2 + upgraded graphics card. I really don't see the point in spending $200 on a soundcard to get a marginal framerate improvement.
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people don't buy x-fi's for framerates...
 
ok here's the answer, if gaming isn't your main concern don't get any sounblaster card PERIOD.
 
Xeero said:
ok here's the answer, if gaming is your main concern don't get any sounblater card PERIOD.
Click to expand...

what would you recommend for gaming?
 
Xeero said:
ok here's the answer, if gaming is your main concern don't get any sounblater card PERIOD.
Click to expand...

Thats the most ludicrous thing I have read hear lately. of course, I will give you the benefit of doubt that you meant to spell soundblaster not soundblater.

DO NOT get an A2 card over an X-Fi, you will regret it.

If you think you want X-Ram, then get the fatality, it's the cheapest card with it. There are many games that will benefit from it, basically any game that uses sound files will benefit.
 
aZn_plyR said:
people don't buy x-fi's for framerates...
Click to expand...

People buy Graphics cards for framerates.

But...people DO buy X-Fi's to get frame rates WITH all the sound options maxxed out.
 
BBA said:
There are many games that will benefit from it, basically any game that uses sound files will benefit.
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Thats not true, the X-ram is mostly useless right now and the only game really even programmed for it is BF2, and the framerate increase was something like 1%.

If your smart you would at least save your money for X-fi 2 since that might actually be the time that game developers take the idea seriously and actually use the X-ram. Otherwise if the game is not specifically coded to use it, its as good as a paper weight.
 
BBA said:
People buy Graphics cards for framerates.

But...people DO buy X-Fi's to get frame rates WITH all the sound options maxxed out.
Click to expand...

agreed but he wasn't referring to the sound benefit of the x-fi's :p jsut you would get higher fps.. ;)
 
UltimaParadox said:
Thats not true, the X-ram is mostly useless right now and the only game really even programmed for it is BF2, and the framerate increase was something like 1%.

If your smart you would at least save your money for X-fi 2 since that might actually be the time that game developers take the idea seriously and actually use the X-ram. Otherwise if the game is not specifically coded to use it, its as good as a paper weight.
Click to expand...

After finding what the X-Ram really is there for, it makes no difference if the game is made to specifically use it or not. In fact a game made to specifically get the max benefit from it, the game would be one that does not compress it's audio files into ogg or mp3 format. Now, even if the games have compressed sound formats, it still is a sound file cache and it will reduce sound file i/o requests over the PCI bus, so that in itself is a storage and cache benefit of 62MB sound files over what you get with only the 2 MB memory cards.


BTW: You say how the X-Fi only makes like 1% difference in frame rate, but you fail to mention that 1% was in X-Fi mode, and the frame rate in the same mode as the non-X-Fi card was a little bit higher of a percentage.

The real gain in BF2 so far with the X-Fi is simply the fact you get EAX5 with 128 hardware accellerated individual sounds. You won't come close to that with ANY other card available today. I would like to see someone compare the non-Xram models directly with the X-Ram models just to see the benefit, I have yet to see that. If anyone lives in Jacksonville, owns a non-X-Ram card and wants to do a comparison, I am willing to compare it to my X-Ram model just to see.
 
This is a clip from a Digit-Life review of the X-Fi: http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html


Unlike sound cards of the last decades, X-Fi on-board memory is used for storing and caching sounds in games instead of MIDI samples.
Click to expand...

They further go on to say if a game is optimized for it, such as it's game sound files that are not compressed mpeg or ogg formats, you can save the processing power of loading a decompressor, which translates into more processing for game graphics/physics, which can result in better frame rates for any game not GPU limited.

Sounds like a very easy thing to implement for games...simply use wav files instead of MP3's in the sounds directories.

AND:
Presently only Battlefield2 offers the direct support of X-Fi (even the demo version!), implemented via OpenAL. In case of such a card, you may choose Creative X-Fi, EAX and Ultra High audio settings. The on-board memory will be used to cache samples and accelerate audio calculations. It should be added that samples in this game are generally of an average quality, many of them are 22 kHz; besides, they are compressed into OGG with the variable bit rate of 100 Kbit/s. So the audio quality in case of X-Fi and activated EAX deserves a Very Good mark, but no Excellent - that's because the sample quality is horrible. Doom3 with Patch 1.3 (enables EAX4) sounds much more interesting.
Click to expand...

The only conclusion is: BF2 DOES make use of X-Ram, but not in the most complete fashion where BF2 could have used non-compressed formats for better performance.

Now I am starting to learn about some benefits the 64 MB X-Ram may have in games I actually own.

This is a good thing!
 
Well let me ask you guys this. Coming from a Sound Blaster Live! am I gonna be impressed over the sound quality of the X-Fi?
 
Speaking for myself, coming from an Audigy 2 ZS, I was impressed.

Then again, I thik my A2ZS might have had a ringing problem in the right front channel, so it may not be a valid atestation.
 
coming from a sound blaster live? definitely you will notice a difference. coming from onboard sound w/ digital output to a receiver? probably only in games and nothing else
 
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