Creative X-Fi Extreme PCI-E

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brajan

brajan

<b>League Adm</b><b>inistrator</b><br /><b>For</b>
Feb 25, 2004
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About a week ago i bought this soundcard (Creative X-Fi Extreme PCI-E). It's designed for PCI Express slot so i thought it's good .... well .... it's bloody NOT. It's worst soundcard i've ever seen/heard. This version doesn't have his own cpu/chipset or whatever it's called so it uses PC resources ... aka software card. Anyway, nothing wrong with it as my pc could easly handle 'some' sound ... wrong again. Listening to the music in Windows Media Player with those shit transitions just simply raped this card. Sound was ~75% slower and absolutely not acceptable quality while CPU usage was about 10% ( 3GHz Intel DualCore with 6MB cache + 2GB RAM).
Yesterday during league match it was a horror trying to play and use TS at the same time with this shit.

Save your self a lot of nerves and you money ... DON'T BUY THIS CARD!


P.S.
My second sound card just arrived. It's a X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty edition and i really hope it won't disappoint me again. Gonna test it now so cu later ;)
 
Every soundcard stresses the CPU in some way.
The only difference between a good and a crap card is, that the good card needs less ressources.

But overall you see what makes me say that i never ever buy a creative soundcard again.
1) They have the crappierst driver support of all time. They release in 2 years maybe 1 new driver :thumb:
2) they cut functions and features via driver which were available under WinXP, so you are forced to buy new stuff.
(ie. Audigy cards and even some older X-FI cards)
3) They dont give a damn about their customers. In the official Creative forum you dont even get help.
4) They cut functions in games when you've older soundhardware just to push their sellings (ie Mass effect)

All modern onboard devices are able to do 5.1 or even 7.1 sound with EAX effects. Enough for games :P
 
Well, not much reviewing off soundcards, especially not on this forum so it's very welcome (especially Pci-E)
Shame about the shitebuy, happens most of us unless you buy a dell :P
 
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Well you still can try ;) I will never buy such card never again. Those cards are not independent devices with own cpu/chipset but only something like expansion cards imho.

Anyway i just played some music and played some HL2 and BF2142 with new one and i absolutely love it. The Cristalizer thingie for mp3 music is amazing. I have my speaker system (Creative DTT 2200) for about 7 years and i didn't knew they can sound so nicely lol.
 
brajan said:
Save your self a lot of nerves and you money ... DON'T BUY THIS CARD!
Click to expand...
Might add to that, don't buy ANY Creative products if you have Vista.

There has been slim-to-none driver support in that department for a long time.
I waited for a driver for 3 months before I went back to XP.

brajan said:
P.S.
My second sound card just arrived. It's a X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty edition and i really hope it won't disappoint me again.
Click to expand...
I have that one aswell, and it certainly lives up to my expectations!
Screw the Fatal1ty branding of it, the card is great!
 
subZ said:
Might add to that, don't buy ANY Creative products if you have Vista.

There has been slim-to-none driver support in that department for a long time.
I waited for a driver for 3 months before I went back to XP.

I have that one aswell, and it certainly lives up to my expectations!
Screw the Fatal1ty branding of it, the card is great!
Click to expand...

You beat me to it. I got dual boot XP/Vista. Sound card works amazing under XP ... but wtf is this shit under Vista?! Seriously! It's not much better then PCI-E version i described in first post ... big fat WTF?!
 
I've heard good things about Turtle Beach cards. Anyone tried one of those?

So far I've been using creative but I never found the windows drivers to be much good. When I had win2k it meant downloading a special driver from their w/site to be able to hear more than one source at a time - ie listen to mp3s while playing UT - cos the card had no hardware mixer. Luckily Alsa make good drivers for creative cards for linux.
 
brajan said:
You beat me to it. I got dual boot XP/Vista. Sound card works amazing under XP ... but wtf is this shit under Vista?! Seriously! It's not much better then PCI-E version i described in first post ... big fat WTF?!
Click to expand...
wake up, exactly that's creative.

They always sucked in making drivers and they always will. plain simple as that.
Oh and dont expect any driver updates for older generations, creative never does that. they prefer promoting their newest babies while forgetting about the old.
 
Bart how do you know it's Creative and not Microsoft (Vista) fucking it up? It works perfect under XP so they did good drivers for this system after all. Microsoft did a lot of changes about how drivers and software access the hardware. Also don't forget about uber gay DVD quality lowering in Vista. My guess it's fucking Microsoft.
 
Not that i'm defending Creative. I don't care but seriously give me some facts. I got Creative sound cards since my very first PC and i can't remember any problems before. Maybe it's Vista maybe it's Microsoft but the fact is i never had problems with dodgy sound before (vista).
 
In this case Microsoft are the lesser of the two evils. Certainly they have made it a lot harder for the likes of Creative to access and use the full potential of their hardware, but other companies are managing to make the transition through altering their programming techniques and adapting their whole production line process to be more efficient and more compatible with a number of different systems.

It was proven recently by the fact that you could (and maybe still can if you look hard enough) download 'hacked' drivers that correctly unlocked the features of particular models of Creative cards.

Instead of giving the guy a job in their software department, or at least opening up and accepting that indeed possible to unlock these features & learning from the adaptions, Creative set forth their legal team making various threats against the guy for illegally modifying their intellectual property.

That's the kind of company you're funding by continuing to support their hardware.
 
brajan said:
Bart how do you know it's Creative and not Microsoft (Vista) fucking it up? It works perfect under XP so they did good drivers for this system after all. Microsoft did a lot of changes about how drivers and software access the hardware. Also don't forget about uber gay DVD quality lowering in Vista. My guess it's fucking Microsoft.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying that MS is any better, but it isnt the job of MS to deliver drivers for creative soundcards regulary. That's (unfortunally) the job of creative.

It doesnt matter if the XP drivers are wicked, when you are using Vista.
For good drivers you need something creative dont wanna spent: time and work.

I wouldnt say anything when those Creative drivers would be "Everything that is possible", but they are not.
That's what community programmers showed with their modified drivers and programs.
But instead of being glad that the creative-community has so talented guys, Creative sued them.
Yes, they sued the guys who improved those crap bollox, creative called drivers, and made it available for free.

Great init, yes that's what the community also thought. So they started flaming, insulting creative.
And suprise, suprise: Creative released a better driver last month.
no, i wont start how they fucked up the customers 7 years ago as XP has been published, but if you threat your customers in that way, you dont have to wonder that you get this bad reputation.

The same will happen in 2 years when Windows 7 is there. So dont even bother buy an expensive creative card, coz you'll be forced to upgrade soon anyway.

My decision is made, i'll never ever buy a fckn thing from creative. No matter how good they seem to be. Not that you or creative care, but atleast i dont have to be angry about this company anymore :P
 
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