DescentBB

My old NF4 board had some really good onboard sound, however when I upgraded to my new Core 2 Duo Nforce I650 board, I was stuck with the horrid Realtek HD Audio onboard chip. Sounds and Bass were very distorted, games even worse. Tried my old SB Live and it wasn't as crisp and clear as I remember it being. I had done a bit of reading on the SB X-Fi. I heard mixed results from here, reviewers on newegg and creative's site and Anandtech but decided to go buy it from a local Circuit City instead of online so if it sucked/locked up computer, I could return it easily.

At first I was met with BSODs using the install disc. Tried the online drivers... same... Messed with BIOS settings, no avail. Creative Support recommended flashing the mobo BIOS to the newest version... board is so new it has the most current version of flash... Creatives forums said if I sent them the card they could flash it with some fix to make it more compatable with my motherboard... Not happening... About to repack the card and make the trip back to town when I figured I'd pop the card from PCI slot 2 into PCI slot 1. Bam. Installation completes and I have sound Huston.

Anyways, long story aside, this card is freakin awesome. I have never heard more crystal clear highs and booming lows from my Bose Companion speaker system and sub. The bass booster, crystallizer, eq in the drivers are top notch. I HIGHLY recommend this card. Games are not affected either by having all the juicy settings and EAX on.

The card set me back 99 bucks but the huge improvement over the SB Live and Onboard audio is worth it. I'm sure my neighbors are loving me and my Subwoofer about now. If you are considering buying a new sound card consider this one, however buy it locally, there is a huge list of problems this card can cause from popping/crackling to BSODs and if you happen to have one of the boards deemed \"Cursed\" by Creative you can at least return it hassle free.

X-Fi Problems link

Anyway, just wanted to share my experience here. Cheers.

I upgraded from a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz to the X-Fi Platinum last year (using Logitech 2.1 THX speakers) and it's a huge difference.

I recommend the X-Fi to anyone with a decent set of speakers, if you have crap speakers an X-FI won't do you any good.

What sort of digital outputs and encoding options does the X-Fi have? I ask because I have a 650w 5.1 home theater system attached to my PC, which operates at it's best feeding off Dolby Digital or DTS over optical SP-DIF. So would the X-Fi be up to driving all 6 channels on this beast over just one cable without eating a ton of CPU time to do the encoding?

It doesn't do any dolby encoding (no CL card does actually). Starting w/ Jan new X-Fi cards don't even do decoding anymore (was done in the driver before). CL is too cheap to pay the license. If you don't do a lot of gaming I would recommend the X-Meridian over a X-Fi anytime -- CL sux donkey balls in support & driver development big time.

My Platinum came with Optical Digital input and output jacks. Don't have any way to test them though.

If it can't do the encoding it is meaningless, since SP-DIF without encoding is only a stereo PCM wav.

*cough* S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format ) *cough*

Krom wrote:If it can't do the encoding it is meaningless, since SP-DIF without encoding is only a stereo PCM wav.

Correct. CL wants you to buy this. Like I said, CL sux big time.