Customer Reviews

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro Series Sound Card ( 70SB046A00000 )

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

According to the Creative Forums there is a raging group of hundreds of boiling mad customers who purchased the product and discovered it has a fundamental incompatibility with the popular Nvidia chipsets. My own new Intel Duo Core speed demon with 4GB DDR and dual graphics cards is no exception. The card would greatly improve the quality of the sound over the onboard audio but it has unacceptable hiss and pop. According to Creative it s Nvidia's fault, however, the consensus on the forum is that it is Creative's fault and they should be issuing a recall of the X-Fi cards. If you are not certain you have no Nvidia chipsets in your computer DO NOT purchase this product.

Ok. So i was not going to buy this sound card when i heard it does not comply with Nvidia chipsets. I own an ASUS Striker Extreme, which has a Nvidia chipset. I am betting that the folks that have had this issue did not uninstall the old software and drivers of the intigrated ASUS sound card. If you did not do it correctly then this is why this card will not work. For those that are going to do this i will explain how to do. First uninstall the old software (sound max), then go to device manager and delete all the atrubutes for the sound device. once that is done turn off the computer and take out the ASUS sound card. If you are able to start your computer and have it go into windows without any issues like errors then go ahaid and shut off the computer and install the XFI. Once installed turn on the computer and let windows find the card and when it pops us and say install drivers, (important) CLICK CANCEL. Once you have done that then pop in the supplied XFI disk and let the AUTOEXE install drivers. Now if you have done everything correctly this will work great. I myself did not update the drivers right away. Not updateing has worked for me. Good luck I hope this helps those that has Nvidia chipsets.

OHH BTW.. NO Cons JUST BUY IT.. Amazon is the cheapest source.

If you use your headphones at all for games, DvDs, or music this is an awesome sound card specifically designed for headphone users and the quality is crystal clear from low to high volumes.

Games - you can hear your surroundings crystal clear. Using headphones you can hear noise above, below, in front, from behind, to your left, and to your right. This card delivers an amazingly 3D rich surround sound.

DvDs - Watching DvDs on my computer never sounded so good. You can hear the 3D surround sound even using headphones and the rich details of each sound is so clear you will notice new sounds in the background never noticed before.

Cds/MP3(4)s - Total joy. You might want to use the built-in equalizer and mixer until you find your sweet spot. When you do.....WOWZERS!

Pros:
Easy installation
Crystal crisp sound on games, music, DvDs

Cons:
Price maybe an issue
Full of unnecessary software (yay for customized installation)
Switching modes (Entertainment, Games, Audio Creation) can be a hassle
No plug for joystick or gamepad
Wish I had this sound card sooner

Definitely will recommend this card to friends and family.

[..]

This card is bugged to death with problems. MP3s randomly play at twice the speed. WMAs suddenly won't play and instead hiss or screech. To top off this incredibly poor bundle of rubbish, they won't even provide you with MP3 encoding so you can rip your CD collection - you have to buy that separately. This is incredulous for such an expensive card. I will NEVER buy from Creative again, their attitude and expertise with technology is worse than ever!!

Update (05/25/2008) - The "Super Rip" mode was generating garbage when I ripped using the "surround 5.1" option. I sent a support ticket to Creative and they fobbed me off with an article on how to record audio! Well, for starters, I'm no idiot and know how to rip CDs! On top of that, most of the email contained advertising for other products. It seems they don't care about their customers at all - they just want their money.

Well, I'm shoving this card in my old PC and I'll be getting an Asus Xonar D2 soon. I had to return several products in the last 6 months. It seems most manufacturers can't produce a quality kit any more. What's going on with tech these days? Does anything work? Some friends have told me to "hang in there" with X-Fi and wait for better drivers? Well, I don't really care anymore as I will follow Asus now. If they patch the X-Fi that would be great, but this company's record on product quality and customer service is appauling. I'll not be made a sucker again.

This card was a major improvement from my previous (sound blaster 2.0)
Really amazing sound quality for games like battlefield 2, One reason is that with this card I was able to distinguish the vehicles type and also the direction it was coming from!
Also with this card I notice my music was a lot more crisp and clear.
I recommend this to anyone who is a hardcore gamer like me.

I, along with many others, have experienced "sound lock-ups", squeals and computer lock-ups with this card and the others in this series. My sound issues have occurred mostly during games.

Sound quality is excellent in Windows and when the card is working properly in games.

Most of the issues appear to involve some kind of hardware conflict as most afflicted users have high-end computer systems running SLI, although the problems are not exclusive to these configurations.

I am currently working with CL to resolve the issue, but I'm not sure they know what is causing it as this issue has been around since Aug 06.

I am not saying "don't buy", just be sure you have fully investigated all the issues before making the purchase as I doubt your installation and use with be trouble free.

I thought long and hard about buying this card, something about $149 for a sound card seems crazy to me. As I sit here listening to music and hearing sounds that I havent heard before in recordings that I have heard hundreds of times I wonder how I got it so cheap. You wont believe me till you spend the money to go and buy one. It is amazing to me the clarity even on recordings from the 50s and before that sound like the singer is on a stage right in front of you. The crystallizer is amazing, the equalizer does everything its supposed to. I teamed this with Logitech z-5300 5.1 speakers for reference. Like I said in the caption, BEYOND WORDS! Buy this card!

*updated review - see end*
Great sound - after a couple hours I re-hooked up my old speakers and was *really* blown away by how much my entire sound stage "collapsed"

There is enough in the other reviews about the virtues of this card, everyting they said is right - if you want great sound, you will NOT be let down.

With that said, I would like to address a issue that I think is simply misleading and wrong.

WARNING: If you are buying because of the bundled powerDVD software *Don't*

PowerDVD has lost a customer due to the misleading and stupid bundling of their software with this card -- no its not all creative's fault - read on....

The package states "includes Cyberlink's PowerDVD software with DTS and Dolby Digital-EX decoding via free download for an unbeatable DVD movie watching experience"

You may want to remember that "unbeatable" line up there. That sorta implies that you are getting a pretty current version and that you can't beat it. (unbeatable?)

Cyberlink currently has 3 versions of this software available for sale:

1. versoin 7
2. version 8
3. version 8 ultra (blueray)

Now, I don't expect their top of the line software - however, I DO expect at least a currently shipping version!

Thats right - you get none of the above - you get version 6.

Now version 6 has all sorts of known problems (with new hardware - it IS 3 versoin old) - I was never able to get it to work with most of my movies and its decoding was ify at best.

Not only that, every time you run it it pesters you to "upgrade to version 7 or 8 and you can have a really great software program at a special price -- click here!" - (my paraphrasing...but you get the point)

OK - I'l bite -- how much is the "special pricing"

Are you ready for this -- instead of 99.00 you can buy it for 95.00 -- Thats right - you save 5.00!

Cyberlink obviously thinks that version 7, 8 and 8 ultra all "beat" version 6 - and they obviously rate version 6 as only being worth about
$5.00.

Thanks guys!

Now, I don't mind bundling "trial versions" of software - or giving me old versions -- but AT LEAST warn me of that when I purchase it.

I don't want to buy a 130.00 card then spend almost the same amount to get software that it sounds like I am alread getting.

Now cyberlink -- if you really wanted to get me as a cuatomer - at least give me a *real deal* - say half off for having the bundled version of your software ---

Just my thoughts...

BTW - I am curretnly using the free "VLC Media player" and it seems to be working well. But the !hours! I wasted trying to ger version 6 of powerDVD to work correctly really left a bad taste with me. BTW - yes I did download powerDVD version 8's trial and yes - it does seem to work. However, I would spend MORE money with some other company rather than support this dishonest practice of "bait and switch"

Update:
OK after spending even MORE time I have learned the following:
Digital IN: Does NOT support dolby 5.1 (card is not a dolby decoder - yes you can soft of figure this out but the wording of everything certainly lets you (and hundreds of others looking at the sheer number of complaints out there) think that it does.

Digital OUT: Does NOT send out dolby 5.1 out the digital out.

What this means is if you attach a DVD or cable box to the digital in you only get stereo - no surround and if you attach the digital out to your dolby receiver you still only get stereo - no surround! You only get surround from internal programs (games dvd software) and then ONLY if you either use the analog outputs (!!) or purchase another device from creative for another 179.00...even then you still have to convert to analog - go to device - it converts back to digital then goes from there.

Creative support is certainly aware of this issue and simply chooses to make it as hard as possible to find out. All these are design decisions that Creative made and should have shared upfront in a *clear* manner with us. I downloaed the manual for the card ahead of time and it *clearly* states that it does several things it does NOT do -- turns out they only have one manual of their product line and all the different part do not relate to all the products.

You mean you really cannot have a seperate file for each product telling me what it does and how to do it? Really? That is just too much work???

I expected better from you creative.

Great soundcard! I noticed in Battlefield 2142 that I can hear the sounds of footsteps behind me better. I'm not getting knifed as often (which is a very good thing!) I'm glad I got this card.

Quality of construction, of sound, and features are what I've come to expect from Creative. Installation is simple, ten minutes and you're ready to go. Suffers from Creative's well known bloated software package, you may want to install just the drivers. But - you're paying a premium price for 64meg of "XRam" which is not even used unless your game or app is programmed to access it; and there are very, very few developers who've pursued this. Opt instead for one of the lower level X-Fi cards; same features, same sound, no XRam, much cheaper. I would have awarded the full five stars if the XRam was functional for all apps.