Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer Sound Card

by Creative

Product Details

Product Manual [1.25mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005PK7P
• Item model number: SB0090X
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 17, 2005

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent New Sound Card, September 21, 2001

By 

celes_knight (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer Sound Card (Personal Computers)

My motherboard has problems with many sound cards. I was expecting to have problems with this card too; but luckily, I was wrong. I popped it in and WindowsXP automatically found and installed drivers for it just fine. I decided to `stress test' it by playing an MP3, RA file, MPEG, virus scan, and a few other programs at the same time. I've had some cards that would hiss and skip if there was any stress on the system. Amazingly, this card played everything beautifully.

As you may know, Phillips new sound card allows for adding different effects to sound. I.e. you can have everything sound like it's coming from underwater. The Audigy allows for the same type of effects. The Audigy doesn't have as many effects as the Phillips card, but the effects are more useful. You can turn male voices to female voices, change the pitch of the sounds, make it sound like an alien is speaking, etc.

The sound processor is four times faster than the Live! line. In addition, this card comes with a 1394 (firewire) connector, so you can plug in digital cameras, or network two PCs together through it. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds cool. I just have to talk my friends into buying this card ;-)

I doubt there will be any games that support this card's new effects for several months. So if you already have a Vortex, Live!, or other good card, there is no reason to run and buy this. If (like me) you need a card right now, or you're still using a 16-bit card, there is no reason not to get this. Low memory systems might not be able to use all of the programs the card comes with. Many of the want to run all the time and are real memory hogs.

All in all, an excellent card.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent soundcard... but beware, October 9, 2001

By 

Jan van Wijk (Zwolle, The Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer Sound Card (Personal Computers)

Soundquality: 9/10

This card has got much more power than the previous Live!-cards and everything sounds great. It doesn't get the full 10 because of the lack of A3D-support (IMO better than EAX, but EAX isn't that bad...) and mere average MIDI-sound (Generalmusic) Don't be afraid though, there are some excellent Midifonts circling around the internet..

Software: 8/10

Not too much musicprograms but 2 great games: Giants and Deus Ex. An odd choice by the way since the sound of these games aren't the 'best ever heard'. But it's a good deal, since these games are fun to play.

Price/Quality-ratio: 10/10

This card isn't too expensive and it sounds very clean and clear; it's also got 5.1-support and the firewire-port is a welcome addition.

5 stars? Not quite... this baby still _hates_ mr. KT133 and KT266...

Ease of installation: 4/10 (VIA+AMD based system) | 8/10 (Pentium based system)

Checklist for VIA:

- Flash Bios, if it goes wrong you can buy a new mainboard...
- Install the new VIA 4 in 1 drivers, hope it goes allright (computer will behave rather strange if it doesn't..)
- Tweak Bios: prepare to spend several hours tweaking this thing..

If you don't do this, Windows is likely to crash often and the card produces a loud, crackling noise..

"Plug 'n Play huh?"

Concluding Thoughts:

This card is a great deal, reasonably priced and good sound but almost reaching 5 stars it trips over "Ease of Use" and loses one for being a frustrating brat and costing me three weekends pulling of utter frustration :)

Now everything's allright and I'm not at all disappointed. Just... be prepared :o

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars worked better on xp os than philips 5.1 card, November 17, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer Sound Card (Personal Computers)

i am running a 1.4ghz athlon on an msi k7ta 266 motherboard, with 256mbs of ddr ram and a geforce 3 ti 500 video card. when i installed the xp operating system i was able to update drivers for everything except the philips sound card. i was able to find the beta drivers but they ended up being pretty lousy. coming out of stanby the only sound would be loud hissing. i have klipsch promedia 5.1 sound system so good sound was a must. i tried this audigy x-gamer and it worked perfect. no snags on the install, downloaded the drivers from the sound blaster site. the sound from this card is great. if your a gamer you gotta try this card.