Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Card ( 70SB046600002 )

by Creative Labs

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000B63KU0
• Item model number: 70SB046600002
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #46,303 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: July 7, 2004

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Enhance Your Music, Games and Movies With Xtreme Fidelity!

Designed to meet the performance demands of the world's best-known professional gamer, Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty™ sound card provides stunning 109dB SNR audio quality, accelerates gaming performance and includes 64MB of on-board X-RAM for high performance gaming. With support for EAX® ADVANCED HD™ 5.0, the latest version of the EAX Environmental Audio standard, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty card utilizes X-Fi CMSS 3D technology for stunning audio realism over headphones in LAN gaming. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty features a convenient front-facing internal drive bay for easy connectivity, plus the X-Fi IR remote to easily access and control all digital entertainment, and to control the X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer, X-Fi CMSS 3D, 3DMIDI and EAX. In addition to providing outstanding gaming performance, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty includes all of the standard features, application software, power and performance capabilities of the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum and Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic.

Harness the full power of Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty by selecting one of its 3 usage modes:

Gaming Mode: For Ultimate Gaming Performance and Maximum Realism

Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty delivers the fastest gaming performance ever! A completely re-engineered game audio processing engine utilizing Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor allows Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty to deliver the fastest gaming performance ever seen, providing more than a 15% performance boost over motherboard audio solutions while simultaneously delivering full audio effects!

Sound Blaster X-Fi - The first sound card with Xtreme Fidelity RAM. X-RAM allows developers to deliver even higher quality audio samples that can be loaded into dedicated audio RAM rather than system RAM, which would affect overall performance. In certain implementations it can further boost performance beyond the standard Sound Blaster X-Fi technology.

X-Fi CMSS-3D delivers the most realistic surround sound experience with headphones. Whether you use headphones or speakers you'll know exactly where your enemies are by utilizing advanced technology for amazing positional gaming audio. With headphones X-Fi CMSS-3D externalizes the audio by creating ten virtual speakers around you, above you and below you for an experience that's so real you'll forget you're wearing headphones. When using speakers X-Fi CMSS-3D uses virtual positions to place sounds anywhere around you, so your gaming audio is no longer restricted by the number or placement of your speakers. Now you can enjoy the most accurate gaming surround sound ever!

EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 delivers the most realistic gaming audio ever! Sound Blaster X-Fi delivers the most life-like audio environments ever, and for the first time it can do so while providing maximum performance! Features like 128 voice support, EAX MacroFX, EAX PurePath & Environment FlexiFX set a new standard for EAX and realism available in game audio.

X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer automatically upgrades existing games to Xtreme Fidelity. Sound Blaster X-Fi converts all audio, in any bit depth, into 24-bit quality and then enhances it to make games sound more dynamic and realistic than you could ever imagine!

Entertainment Mode: For Xtreme Fidelity Music and Movies

X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer enhances MP3s and movies to sound better than they do on their original CD or DVD. Utilizing the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor your music and movie audio is sent through a two-step quality enhancement process. First the processor converts the audio into 24-bit/96kHz quality, then it enhances the parts of the audio stream that have been restricted/damaged during the compression stages to 16-bit and then to MP3. The result of these enhancements is music that sounds cleaner, smoother and has more sparkle, and movies that sound more realistic than ever before!

X-Fi CMSS-3D allows you to upgrade your MP3 music and stereo movies into surround sound with headphones or multichannel speakers. Enjoy your stereo MP3s and movies in surround sound with X-Fi CMSS-3D technology. The Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor intelligently remixes the audio into surround sound to match the speaker system you have (including headphones). It also uses advanced techniques to extract specific audio elements, like voice to the center channel and ambience to the surrounding channels, so your music and movies sound more alive than ever before!

SuperRip allows you to rip your CDs into Xtreme Fidelity quality. Sound Blaster X-Fi uses the X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer and X-Fi CMSS-3D features to "SuperRip" CD's to Xtreme Fidelity quality. You can now enjoy permanently enhanced music instead of low-quality MP3 files!

Enjoy the latest cinematic technologies for the ultimate PC movie experience! Experience incredible audio with THX certified quality and unbeatable movie sound with DTS-ES and Dolby Digital EX decoding!

Audio Creation Mode: For Pristine Audio Recording Quality

Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty offers high quality, feature-rich recording. Utilizing the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor, you'll get the most advanced features and effects of any audio processor for music and audio creation currently available, delivering pristine audio plalyback quality. The Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity audio processor features a near transparent SRC engine that converts to and from any resolution at 136dB THD+N, and also provides digital-matched recording capabilities in resolutions from 44.1kHz to 96kHz. You'll also get support for ASIO recordings with latency as low as one millisecond, up to eight different hardware effects, 24-bit SoundFont sampling, and 3D MIDI for amazing flexibility and recording results.

Product Description

Take your games to the next level with the X-Fi Fatal1ty Sound Card / 64MB X-RAM / I/O Drive w/ Remote / 24-bit X-Fi Crystalizer / EAX Advanced HD 5.0

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Sound, Awesome Performance, Poopy Pricing, October 1, 2005

By 

GuruChaz (Earth) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Card ( 70SB046600002 ) (Personal Computers)

I would have given this sound card 5 Stars if it wasn't for two things:
1. The retail price is about $50-$75 too high for this card. I don't like how Soundblaster tries to price gouge the consumer.
2. Most of the online discount store still have this card priced at the retail price. What's up with that?

That aside, this card has its own CPU which means, like so many Nvidia or ATI video cards today, it takes a lot of the strain off your computer's CPU allowing for faster performance. Add the 64M XRAM and all the games that are programmed to use it will fly. Only the Fatal1ty or Elite Pro versions of this card have the 64M XRAM.

It would have been better for Soundblaster to offer the XRAM on their lower end card and price it at around $149 retail. Sadly, this choice is not an option yet. Maybe Soundblaster will wise up soon.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT FOR GAMERS, December 9, 2005

By 

A Gamer at Heart (Agoura Hills, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Card ( 70SB046600002 ) (Personal Computers)

I agree that these cards are very pricey. The sound in games and music, however, is amazing. The "crystallizer" feature (included in the whole x-fi line) creates an amazing surround effect for gaming and music, especially for headphones. I purchased this card because I must play through headphones. I only went with the fatal1ty card because it was on sale as a preorder. Otherwise, I would have purchased the platinum because I am unsure if developers will actually utilize the onboard ram this card comes with. The presence of the ram doesn't effect the sound, it only theoretically offloads the CPU. If you have the means and play through headphones, I highly recommend this card.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A VERY worthy upgrade!! (Despite one quirky quirk), December 22, 2007

By 

Twiddles42 (MN, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Card ( 70SB046600002 ) (Personal Computers)

My previous sound card was a Sound Blaster Audigy II (Gamer ZS). I saw the Fatal1ty and wondered "Is this thing worth the price?" So I started reading user reviews on tech topic forums, with most people saying "50 million transistors vs 5, what would you do? ;) " Not helpful, and knowing the only way to learn something is to do it yourself, I bought one.

Needless to say, I am floored with its performance.

Of course, as a cynical Gen-X'er, I felt the need to point out the quirk first! I use Windows Vista - when removing the Audigy II and putting in the Fatal1ty (different PCI slot), Vista blue-screened when loading the CL control panel. I rebooted into safe mode and removed the previous drivers. Rebooting afterward, I then installed the Fatal1ty software. I still received a prompt of some old CL Control Panel software, but it was overwritten without any problems. Maybe it's not a quirk; I could have removed the old software first.

As with the Audigy II software, my antivirus software thought the Fatal1ty software contained a virus (no, it didn't). Okay, we'll call that the quirk. Now, how does the card compare?

It blows everything else away. The few games I play (UT2004, Doom3, FS X) sound crisper and with far more background detail than with the previous card. The computer seems to run a tad faster too. The foreground detail really packs an extra depth.

Windows Media Player and MP3s do sound a lot better as well; it is an incredible experience.

But to make the long ramble short, if you have even the Audigy II, this upgrade is not a frivolous purchase.