Customer Reviews

Creative Labs SB0880 PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Sound Card

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I'm not what I would call a hardcore audiophile, but I like my music sounding strong and rich. I had an ASUS Xonar before this one, and I swapped it because the Xonar was not very good at games, which is the second use for the PC. I was afraid the X-Fi wouldn't live up the hype and I would lose music quality for games quality.
I was wrong. I cannot believe how incredible everything sounds. Music quality is perhaps the same or slightly better than with the Xonar, but gaming is just incredibly immersive.
The only two things I don't like very much of the product is 1. the "Modes" are just exactly that. "Entertainment mode" truly makes music sound incredible, but deactivates some gaming features, and "Gaming mode" reactivates all those, but music doesn't sound as well. Switching back and forth isn't my idea of fun. 2. It's Creative. I'm probably one of the most anti-Creative people around since I can't agree with most of their business decisions, but sadly, they have way to many sound patents that won't allow the competition to rise. Although I still hate them, it's just that sadly it's the best product around.

Overall I'm very impressed with the card.

I was using a Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum before buying this card, but the drivers for that card have been less than stable under Windows Vista/Windows 7, and I wanted a card with a TOSLINK input on the back, which this card has. It works much better than the on-board sound functionality, which would often squeak/turn into static with a high processor load, which made gaming difficult at best. I bought this instead of one of the ones built specifically for gaming because X-RAM is used in very few games, and I didn't think it would be much of a benefit. My only real concern is that Creative's driver quality is variable at best, so I can't be sure it will work as well in the future. My suggestion is that once you find a driver that you like, stick with it; don't upgrade just to upgrade. That may make sense with other drivers, like video drivers, but not with Creative drivers.

I am using this to connect my computer to my receiver. I'm using a HDMI cable for video and TOSLINK from this card for audio. I get excellent surround sound from DVDs that I watch this way.

It DOES work with Windows 7 (64 bit)! Please read the rest of my post because it may help you. I upgraded my OS from Vista to Windows 7 and needed a Windows 7 compatible sound card. I did some research and chose this card over the Extreme X-Fi. I installed the sound card and booted up my PC, without disabling the onboard audio. After I downloaded the drivers, it worked nicely for about 30 minutes. Afterwards, I was getting popping and crackling noises throughout my music. I disabled the onboard audio, in the BIOS, and then I removed the drivers and downloaded them again. (I did this several times.) Problem did not go away. I removed the drivers, again, and restarted my pc, allowing Windows 7 to apply the Microsoft HD audio device driver. The noise went away, and the music sounded pretty good, but I wanted the full functionality that I paid for.
I contacted Creative tech support, and they were very helpful. I used some of their suggestions and added some of my own ideas. Here's how I got the sound card to work properly:

1.) I removed the sound card from my PC.
2.) I went to Device Manager and uninstalled the sound card.
3.) I went to Programs and uninstalled ALL software from Creative.
4.) I went to my PC vendor's website and downloaded the latest BIOS, drivers and firmware.
5.) I ran Norton Utilities 15 to scan and fix any errors on my C drive and registry. (It removed about 1500 temp files from my repeated attempts to reinstall the sound card drivers.)
6.) I installed the sound card into a different PCIe slot on my motherboard. (Even though Creative tech support, expressly, stated that I should not install the sound card in the PCIe slot right next to the video card, I ended up doing that because it was the only other slot available.)
7.) I went to the BIOS and disabled the onboard audio.
8.) I downloaded the drivers for the sound card from Creative's website. DO NOT USE THE CD THAT CAME IN THE BOX.

The sound card has been working, beautifully, for two weeks, now. I don't know what combination of the steps that I took to fix the problem did the trick, but it's better to be thorough. I am using some cheap speakers and headphones, but the sound is more nuanced than what I was getting from the Realtek HD onboard audio that I was using with Vista. Be careful because the volume is very loud! When you change modes or settings the volume can reset to something very high and blow out your eardrums!

Overall, I highly recommend this product. Now, I just need to buy some better speakers and/or headphones so that I can get the full benefits of this sound card.

Let me preface my review with a little bit of background information: I was interested in this card because I was looking to upgrade my old Sound Blaster Audigy 2 on my Win XP desktop for two reasons. One was that I could tell my card was clearly outdated in terms of gaming features because the sound would not work at all for some games (Call of Duty 4) and I could tell a lot of sounds were missing from others (Far Cry 2) even after updating the drivers and editing all of the game settings that I could. The second reason was because I now have my desktop hooked up to my living room's HDTV and I wanted to have the capability to run my computer sound on my TV's 5.1 receiver by using the card's optical out (TOSLINK) feature. By searching around, it seemed to me that this was one of the only card's that had the optical feature within a decent price range.

So, in terms of what I was looking for, this card has excelled in both areas. After installing it on Win XP SP 2 (where I did not run into any of the driver issues described by others in their reviews...perhaps Win 7 capability was the main issue there), I booted up Far Cry 2. Let me tell you I was VERY impressed with this new card. The EAX 5.0 clearly made a huge difference. Playing this game with the X-Fi Titanium made it a whole new experience. I then checked out Call of Duty 4. Great surround sound as well. This card honestly blew my expectations out of the water for how much better Far Cry 2 could sound.

The optical out feature has also been great. To refute another reviewer's post, the optical out DOES output in 5.1 surround sound. You simply need to switch on the "Dolby Digital Live" feature within Creative's provided software console. When you first hook your card up to your receiver, it will only push out sound in 2.1. You will need to switch this setting on to get 5.1 surround, a process which takes all of about 5 seconds.

Another aspect that I would like to refute from a previous reviewer's post is that switching between the sound modes (entertainment, gaming, etc) is some kind of difficult, annoying, or tedious task. Actually, I think it is so easy and a nice little feature to have. To switch the sound modes, all you have to do is click "mode" in the software console and then click a picture for one of the three different modes -- and that's it! Compare it to the amount of time you spend clicking between two browser window tabs, two IM windows, or two Google chat windows. It is seriously so easy.

Finally, another great feature is the "X-Fi Crystalizer". Since I didn't see it on the Amazon product description, I figured it's a worthy mention. When you switch this feature on, your mp3 music becomes much cleaner and clearer. Using it with iTunes, I could hear a noticeable difference. I only listen to music with this feature on now! From Creative's site: "The X-Fi Crystalizer(tm) analyses your audio file, identifies key elements that were lost or damaged during the compression process, and re-masters them using selective audio enhancement. The mid-range and high-end (treble) becomes cleaner and clearer. Low-end (bass) frequencies are richer and more defined."

I received this card a few months ago and it's been working great. I have it working in Windows 7 64-bit with 8 gb of RAM (nvidia 680 motherboard as well). No problems at all with this card; you need to make sure to get on creatives website and download their drivers for Windows 7 as the ones included on the disc in the box wont work. Update the drivers too with the Creative autoupdate program that is installed as well and you will not have any problems with this working. I've been playing with this and a few games and dolby digital live and dts connect both function perfectly with games. I have this card plugged into a receiver by spdif as well and it works just as advertised.

Overall a pretty good card, Creative has finally created the card to use with Vista/Windows 7; their earlier x-fi cards were horrible in that they did not support Vista or Vista 64-bit properly. Thankfully Creative has finally did something about the lack of drivers and is now supporting Windows like they should have from the start.

The card itself is fantastic however I had a hell of a time getting drivers to work properly with this thing. Finally I had to resort to recent beta drivers after the install of all the software on the CD failed to get the audio working 'properly'. Meaning Windows Vista found generic drivers for the device and installed them however none of the Creative software packages would run since they couldn't correctly detect a properly running card in the system. As noted once I got the card working properly it puts out incredible sound. Well done on the hardware front however typical Creative Labs trash software/drivers ruined what should have been an easy going experience. I will not be purchasing another Creative Labs piece of hardware again. I said that prior to purchasing this card. This time I'll have to stick with that ideal.

GREAT card. Plugged right in, worked immediately. The drivers are on the disk are GOOD and work right away with Windows XP, but it also gives you an updater application that can go out and find all the latest drivers on it's own and install all the latest software they have. It's not just 20 megs of little driver files like most driver updaters. We're talking 300 megs of programs relating to sound, audio, and multimedia as well as the latest drivers - FANTASTIC! I put a TOSLINK cable between the mac's digital out and the PC's digital in and got 100% crystal clear iTunes. LOVE it.

When set up properly, it enables very high quality gaming surround sound and music playback.

Follow these steps to set up surround sound through digital optical (toslink) in Windows 7 64-bit:

1) Uninstall all your old sound drivers.

2) Power down and install the card.

3) Install the Creative sound drivers (do NOT use the included CD, get them from online) first. Restart your PC afterward.

4) Go to the Creative website and download/install one or both of the Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect packs (free with this card). Be sure to restart afterward.

5) Go to the Creative audio control panel application and set it up for "Gaming" mode and enable either Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect (depending on your receiver's decoding capabilities).

6) IMPORTANT: Set your windows audio output device to "Speakers." Applications will send their surround streams to this output device, and Creative automatically "catches" it and encodes it into the digital optical output instead.

7) Enjoy some high-fidelity audio!

Other notes:
-The x-fi crystallizer software mostly benefits high frequency tones. I leave it off since it has a harsh quality.
-Some people claim to have problems with interference generated by graphics cards or other sources. I installed mine below the heatsink of my graphics card, and I have no interference issues. The large, grounded heatsink in theory has a reasonable EMI shielding effect.

I had this sound card close to two years now. It works perfectly fine with Windows 7 64-bit. If you're planning to buy this, DO NOT use the cd to install your drivers even if it's for Windows XP or Windows Vista, the drivers, applications, and utilities are outdated. ALWAYS download the latest drivers on the Creative website and make sure you select the correct Operating System (towards the bottom of the website) before you start downloading them. DO NOT use the Windows Update driver either.

I am currently using this sound card in my second PCI-Express x16 2.0 slot because my PCI-E x1 slot on my motherboard is dead. Yes, it will work fine in a PCI-E x16 slot, PCI-E x8 slot, and PCI-E x4 slot. Make sure you get an air duster to blow out the dust before you add your new sound card in.

This is what I have installed from the Creative website: Driver, Creative Console Launcher, which is to switch being Entertainment mode and Gaming mode, DTS Connect Pack, and Dolbly Digital Live Pack. Anything else is either a trial software or sound editing application.

As for watching movies, I noticed when I watch HD movies with this sound card with SVM (Smart Volume Management) on, the volume of the actors voice and anything in that happens in the background is balanced. When I watch a movie with the Realtek integrated HD audio, there was no balanced of sound. When the actors were talking, I could barely hear them; as a result, I needed to turn up the volume, but at the same time, the volume of anything happening in the background got even louder. This annoyed me a lot and sometimes scared the crap out of me too due to the explosions in the movie. The SVM fixes this.

As for gaming, I would make sure you switch to game mode. It just sounds better that way. In entertain mode, it amplifies my footsteps and everyone's footsteps, then I wouldn't be able to differentiate. The explosions sounds weird too. I don't PC game with a headset nor do I use a headphone. I just like to use my speakers. When people are talking on the microphone, I can clearly hear them even if they are speaking in a low voice. When I didn't have a sound card, I couldn't hear them speaking or all I heard was just static.

As for listening to music, all I can say that the experience is like having the concert right in front of me or I am sitting in the middle section without anyone sitting in front of me.

I use this sound card for PC gaming, listening to music, and watching movies. A lot of people say sound cards are a waste of money, which I believe is not true for this model. Any other Creative sound card below this model is not worth getting if your computer is running Windows Vista or Windows 7 because the drivers are buggy and may cause issues. Overall, I would recommend getting this sound card if you are considering one.