Vista and X-Fi

[chaikovski2002]

Im going Vista Ultimate 64 bit next week, Ive read that one of the biggest changes is sound related. My question is how does this effect gaming? Can you use EAX, CMSS, THX, and all other features? Does the Alchemy project restore full functionality so you can game without any problems as you would on XP?

 

[Sycraft]

The answer is somewhat complex. Vista natively has no support for any hardware acceleration. Now overall system effects, like CMMS3D still work fine, but hardware acceleration of DirectSound games doesn't. ALchemy is for restoring this functionality. When it works, it works great and the game sounds as it always did. However there are problems. The main one I've encountered is if the game isn't stable. The game crashes, Windows kills the process and orders all drivers/hardware to free up all memory for that. The Creative stuff doesn't, Windows has to halt the system (BSOD). So for some games, no big deal, for others, you can't really use it.

The Vista drivers are ok these days, but still not up to XP quality. There are various weird problems. For example under XP switching in and out of games was no problem. In Vista, that'll earn me a chirp out of my speakers and often weird shit like audio stopping, or switching from the front to rear speakers. Have to quit the game to fix it.

So it all works, and hopefully will get 100% fixed eventually, but you will have problems you didn't before.

 

[deathBOB]

My experience is similar (Vista Business 32bit w/ X-Fi Xtremegamer Pro). The latest creative driver works and the sound quality itself is good (very good compared to the original Audigy I used previously). Game sounds can be screwy and anytime I make a change in the X-Fi control panel the card stops working until I restart. There is some hitching and stuttering during loading or switching between applications.

 

[chaikovski2002]

Can you run BF2 and 2142 with Ultra High sound settings and EAX enabled?

 

[chaikovski2002]

Dammit now im on the fence about Vista Ult 64bit, I got 2 trade offs, If I stick to Xp32bit I cant use all 4 gigs of ram but I get full use of x-fi, If I got Vista I get to use all 4 gigs of ram but it sounds like the x-fi has problems, cant fully run it and configure all settings, sigh someone wanna flip a coin for me?