Creative has been a leader in the PC audio market for as long as I can remember. In fact, the first Sound Blaster card hit the market almost 20 years ago, which can be considered an eternity in "computer years".During this time, Creative has launched about a dozen major soundcards, with their latest outgoing product being the Sound Blaster X-Fi series, which replaced the popular Audigy line a few years ago.
The X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro that we are testing today is Creative's latest offering in the series aimed at audio enthusiasts and especially gamers, making use of a slightly modified chip called EMU20K2 that adds native PCI Express support among a number of improvements and fixes over the previous generation of cards.
Link: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro @ TechSpot
i never got my asus audigy 4 to work with vista as in 5.1 but my asus card works great.
EDIT: The review even mentions they got a BSOD installing the software for it!
Last edited by GreyWolfSC on 15 Sep 2008 - 20:16
My X-FI Fatal1ty Pro would not work properly with Vista x64 no matter what I tried (beta and regular drivers), worked fine on XP Pro x86.
I am currently using my Realtek 8.1 Onboard.
I'm sticking to onboard sound chips for now on, I only bought the Audigy to fix a problem with Half-Life 2 (and it didn't even work! ).
NOTE: I'm still using the Audigy in my old PC, that's running Vista x64 without a problem. However, my new PC is just going to stick with it's onboard sound chip, which is doing a fine job I have to say.
Last edited by Xerxes on 15 Sep 2008 - 21:56
If your a gamer you probably play your games wearing headphones, in which case 5.1 or 7.1 surround-sound and EAX won't get utilized, so why buy a sound card just to get official EAX support?
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=247268
If your a gamer you probably play your games wearing headphones, in which case 5.1 or 7.1 surround-sound and EAX won't get utilized, so why buy a sound card just to get official EAX support?
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=247268
Creative has been THE name in sound cards since I was very young. It's had to break away from something that's you've always known. I wouldn't call it "fanboyism", though.
If your a gamer you probably play your games wearing headphones, in which case 5.1 or 7.1 surround-sound and EAX won't get utilized, so why buy a sound card just to get official EAX support?
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=247268
That's not true at all, EAX isn't simply surround sound, EAX affects how each individual sound actually sounds. So for example, if an enemy is shooting from behind a wall, EAX makes it sound muffled and if it's in a corridor, you'll get echoing noises. THAT'S what EAX does (among other things). Plus, headphones are one of the best ways to utilise surround sound, even though there's only two speakers.
If your a gamer you probably play your games wearing headphones, in which case 5.1 or 7.1 surround-sound and EAX won't get utilized, so why buy a sound card just to get official EAX support?
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=247268
That's not true at all, EAX isn't simply surround sound, EAX affects how each individual sound actually sounds. So for example, if an enemy is shooting from behind a wall, EAX makes it sound muffled and if it's in a corridor, you'll get echoing noises. THAT'S what EAX does (among other things). Plus, headphones are one of the best ways to utilise surround sound, even though there's only two speakers.
You have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
Calling a set of headphones "surround sound" is like calling a cordless phone with caller ID display a "Wireless data device"
Headphones provide the best STEREO separation, but it's still only stereo. Stereo 2.0 instead of Surround-sound 5.1 or 7.1, OK? (Yes, you can actually get headphones that have more than two audio channels and more than one set of speakers in them, but that's generally not what people mean when they say 'headphones."
As far as EAX goes, all EAX is is a set of DSP presets packaged with a spatial API. But you know what? Games sound better with EAX off: I don't mean you get better fps, I mean that things just sound better with it off. Quite frankly, I don't know why you would want to turn EAX on. I just use the Miles Sound System or the default DirectSound rendering and everything sounds better that way.
The worst company.
I despise creative but they seem to have their monopoly secured quite well despite their endless problems.
While I do like the performance of my x-fi gamer there are some games that sound like pure garbage and no manner of tweaking will make them sound good, quake 4, BF2, BF2142 and CoD:UO all sound like ass but other games like unreal (all the unreal series fps games), Painkiller and PK overdose, CoD4, FEAR, HL2 all sound great.
I wish one card would make all games sound great with great 5.1 positioning but I guess that may never happen, if asus came out with an updated xonar with better driver support I would give them another go, one of the things that turned me off to the xonar was the drivers, the drivers that came with the card were the only ones that worked decent for me, all the updated versions would either break something or not work at all unfortunately.
I think if asus put more effort into their sound cards they would eventually be a viable competitor to creative, when nvidia came out with soundstorm a lot of people thought they would be a good competitor to creative but soundstorm disappeared for some reason, I hope asus doesn't give up because they are on the right track.
Seems to me like the 64Mb of XRAM as Creative have called it would be worth pretty much nothing.
Anyway, what the hell does a "pro"
I replaced my Creative X-Fi PLatinum by an Auzentech X-Fi prelude because of the crackling and popping sound problem. The drivers look the same but using the X-Fi Prelude i did not experience any of the problems i had with my X-Fi Platinum. I could be wrong but the drivers are based on Creative works but are modified by Auzentech.
The only way to communicate to that company is to not buy their product and vote with my wallet...
Sick of their unfinished/buggy X-Fi series and horrible, horrible drivers...
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro
hideous marketing namings
I don't have an high-end creative product. Just an audigy value, which its what u hear function is not suppoted in vista. It's a very simple and basic feature for god's sake! Why would you they take that? And the software to use its features fully still not released on web. I was thinkin' that I was upgrading my hardware when I bought an X-Fi Extreme Audio, which I realized that it was just same hardware as audigy value but only had an extra crystalizer software. (It means nothing if it's software based!
Creative sucks! I hope Asus would advance its sound card business.
But does it still have the crackling and popping sound problem ?
My X-Fi Platinum is laying somewhere in my closet unused because of that problem. A problem Creative never corrected. In fact Creative blamed about everyone instead of actually working to correct it.
New drivers reduced the amount of crackling and popping experienced (which may lead to believe the problem is not hardware related) but the card is still not usuable since it still happens once every 10 or so secondes (with the first drivers it was once every secondes).
I will never buy a CReative product again.
I bought an Auzentech X-Fi Prelude to replace my Creative X-Fi Platinum and did not have any sound crackling and popping since then. Both cards use the same chipset ...
These new cards are native PCIe and so far mine is working excellent at least under CoD4, DiRT, GRID, Hellgate, SupCom and a few more.
FWIW, M$ broke creative's sound interface in Vista and that created the driver support nightmare in vista. it's true that they are way behind schedule on offering a proper driver, but it's not completely their fault. M$ should have never broken DSound 3D.
As of today, their is still feature not available on Vista that you can have only on XP. But those same feature are working fine using Asus Xonar or Auzentech.
These new cards are native PCIe and so far mine is working excellent at least under CoD4, DiRT, GRID, Hellgate, SupCom and a few more.
FWIW, M$ broke creative's sound interface in Vista and that created the driver support nightmare in vista. it's true that they are way behind schedule on offering a proper driver, but it's not completely their fault. M$ should have never broken DSound 3D.
wow
you really dont have a clue what you're talking about.
are you not a bit embarassed?
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