Customer Reviews

PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I just picked one of these up because I grew tired of waiting over a year and a half for the maker of my integrated audio chip, to supply a functioning driver. The SigmaTel / IDT chip on my Intel board was decent enough for playback but the drivers were so bad and lacked things like input monitoring, proper switching of recording inputs while in games for voice coms, etc. The drivers would crash and I would lose my mic. They were just horrible. BTW Sigmatel / IDT finally as of a month or so ago added input monitoring to their driver and it still doesnt work. Sigmatel/IDT's new driver also has a huge memory leak where the driver process will use up to 35% CPU. You have to kill the process then restart it to fix it everytime it happens. ENOUGH with Sigmtel /IDT. I cant stand them and That is why i bought a Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series card. (Yes the name is stupidly long)

I was worried because its branded with "Fatal1ty" gamer nonsense and I read some bad things about it online. Everyone seems to bash Creative these days and many are even praising integrated audio solutions such as Sigmatel/IDT and RealTek. Personally, I dont get it. Sigmatel/IDT's integrated products are terrible. Do not rely in integrated audio for quality drivers or quality audio. DO NOT buy into the myth that integrated audio has caught up to Audio Card quality. They havent. Once that chip is on the motherboard, the manufacturers seem to forget about supporting it.

Sound Blaster is just the opposite. I've owned Creative Labs cards since the original Sound Blaster. They have been the backbone of PC audio. This card is incredible. It has very little EMI noise. It has incredible sound quality, very nice high's mids, lows and its output levels are stronger than my peice of crap integrated audio chip which had terrible EMI noise, and terrible drivers. Basically my motherboards integrated audio was worthless and a year long headache.

THIS IS THE CARD TO GET. It cost a lot, but the drivers are solid. It functions as it should. It sounds incredible, and you can count on creative supporting it for many years to come.

DO NOT RELY ON INTEGRATED AUDIO CHIPS. Their drivers are pathetic. That is the lesson here. Do not fall for the misinformation out there. Integrated audio is fine for listening to things but they fail at doing even some of the most basic of audio tasks due to their poor driver support. Creative's X-FI Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series has superior sound quality and excellent driver support. That is what you should be demanding from manufacturers, and if you have to pay a premium for it... so be it. Its far better than waiting a year and a half like i did for Sigmatel/IDT to release a driver that worked 75% of the time.

BTW The breakout box that goes in the front of your case is very helpful. I recommend buying this one rather than the one without it. If you play games and use voice coms, get the drive bay inputs.

Again, I cant stress this enough. It is such a relief to not have to deal with my motherboard's integrated audio anymore. Do it right from the start. GET THIS CARD.

I was blown away by the sound quality of this unit.It's a huge
improvement over the onboard realtek chip.Clarity and directional
positioning in games is amazing and music is vastly improved.
The cmss-3d with headphones does a great job with 5.1 simulation.
Also to note,installation on Vista was a breeze.I installed from
the disc and let auto update do the rest.The software is a bit
bloated but the bells and whistles are fun.You can also do a custom
install and select what you want.If you game or enjoy music you can't
go wrong.I highly recommend this card.

I expected an improvement over my old Creative card. This one is head and shoulders beyond it. If you don't put the settings too crazy, and keep it more "level" it sounds very good on my relatively poor Altec Lansing headphones. Much more volume, so the headroom is reasonable; it still needs a good headphone amp if you want the best, though... but, it sounds believable.

It was expensive, yes, but so far from what I have heard in two weeks of listening, I will be able to have very good sound through a lot of motherboard upgrades with this card. The RCA inputs are an important, added feature for me, as is the volume control. I am glad I "bit the bullet".

Pros: Puts every sound card I've owned in the last fourteen years to shame; clarity is amazing; makes speakers sound as if you paid $500 for the set (that is, if you paid at least a hundred bucks for them).
Not only for gamers who like lots of loud sounds and don't care about nuances in the music. In Entertainment mode, great for listening to Classical music.
I/O drive looks really cool mounted in computer bezel.
Easy installation of both hard and software (with exception noted below in Other stuff).
Driver on CD works perfectly with Win 7, 64-bit OS.
Fits in PCI-ex1 slot directly above my Sapphire 5770 card in the PCI-ex16 slot. Also, when mounted, it probably won't interfere with chip set cooler.
Cons: Driver "confusion"*.
My particular PCI-e card does not fully seat in motherboard slot unless I tip it in at an angle (card attachment plate will then not line up with screw hole--but there are ways to arrange things ;>).
The cost? Who cares? This thing is really worth the money
Other stuff:
I read every review on every site I could find before buying this sound card. I was worried about all those reviews that stated that their unit arrived DOA, that the analog and digital cables were too hard to plug in and that the software sucked.
Here's what I found out about the these situations . . .*DO NOT INSTALL the latest driver you downloaded from Creative's site BEFORE installing the driver from the supplied CD. What you will get is a message during install that the card is not connected properly and then driver installation will stop. Upgrade the driver AFTER installing the one supplied on the disc (then you won't have to send it back to Creative or Amazon because it arrived "dead"). By the way, during installation of the software, check the 64-bit box if your OS is WIN 7 or Vista 64-bit).
I don't understand the criticism about the cables being hard to seat properly. Possibly, the person is attaching the cables upside down in the slot (easy to do if you don't look carefully at the plugs--the digital plug CAN be installed upside down if your force it in). Attach the cables properly and then you won't have to send it back . . .).
My card does not seat properly in its PCI-e slot. I must put it in so the body of the card is at an angle. I drilled a hole through the attachment plate for the screw hole--problem solved.

To start off with I have always loved Creative's sound cards! This one is no different, it has all the bells and whistles, sounds awesome, and 3d positional sound seems to be working well in Windows 7 64bit...now.

My new system is an i7-950 with 2 Nivida GTX460's in SLI mode, 6GB ram, SSD, and no accessible PCI slots (under the SLI cards). So my old Fatality PCI card would not work. After 3 months of supposedly really good on-board sound (Asus SabreTooth X58) , I just couldn't take it anymore and bought this card.

I was unable to get it to work with the drivers on the first night. I did discover that my GTX460's each show 4 HD sound devices, and can play HD sound though the HDMI port! Started me thinking about old IRQ conflicts from back in the day? could it even be happening with 8+ sound devices in Windows 7?

On the second day, I pulled out both 460's and put in an old 5600 video card, then re-installed the creative X-FI PCI-Express card. Worked like a champ!

I then put the 460's back in and the sound card stayed working and both of my video cards as well, so now I have 9 HD sound devices. Not sure if it's a Nivida problem, or a Creative problem, but this is a first to have video cards with 4 independent HD sound channels per card?

I doubt many people will have this problem, except extreme gamers. It's too bad since this is an awesome card. Much better than my old PCI one. I would have given it 5 stars if it worked out of the box, but it was a tricky install.

Hopefully this review can help some other unlucky extreme gamers out there.

Was it worth it? Yes it was! I love the sound this puppy creates!

I purchased this item in Dec 2009 and in Apr 2010 it quit working. It simpley died.
Until you experience the death of your soundblaster, you won't know that you can't contact them via telephone and you won't know the warranty unless you look it up on the web.

The company doesn'tcare about customer service, just your money. This thing was giving my computer system a hard time anyway (Windows 7 [64]) and I'm kind of glad it died; still a replacement would have been good so I could sell it and recoup as much as possible; so what happened with the 1 year warranty that is normal for most expensive products? When a warranty is only 90 days, it means don't buy it. That's why they don't advertise this in the manual that comes with the soundcard.

I had no choice but to submit a form on their website butI never received a work order number or RMA number or any tracking information letting me know they were working on my situation. Nothing, nada, zilch! To find a phone number, I had to do a search on the web and when I dialed it, it referred me back to their unfriendly website. Hence, I could not get an update on whether or not they received my email request. They basically don't want to have anything to do with the customer after the sale.

This is truly a worthless organization. I will never purchase anything from creativelabs--absolutely nothing.

My Reason for purchasing this sound card
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I purchased this sound card because I was using the onboard audio on my motherboard for several years and having recently upgraded my entertainment setup with a new Samsung 46" LED tv, JBL CS480BG High Performance, complete 6-Piece Home Theater Speaker System with Brackets (Black Gloss), and Denon AVR-1912 7.1 Channel Network Streaming A/V Home Theater Receiver I wanted something better then onboard audio for my pc that I have hooked up to the Denon AVR-1912 A/V receiver.

Review:
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Being the first dedicated sound card that I have purchased in several years I wanted to make sure that I did alot of research before purchasing a sound card. There are many competitors in the sound card market right now but the major competitor for Creative Labs is Asus. I found out that the Asus cards are better for listening to music but creative labs makes the only sound cards with full EAX support for gaming which made my choice easier since im a big gamer.

I bought this card because of the I/O dock for the front of the case so that I wouldnt have to reach all the way to the back of the pc to plug in my headsets for gaming and the wide array of features on the card. Since I have my desktop hooked up to my tv via my A/V receiver I hooked up the sound card with a toslink digital audio cable via optical out to my A/V receiver. The installation was pretty easy and straightforward, just hook up and install the software which automatically checks for updates when its installed. Once it was installed however I came across many issues with using this sound card on the setup that I have hooked up to my computer.

Issues that I came across when using this card with an A/V receiver and headset:
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Once this card is installed on your computer and the software is installed it will create two icons in the sound icon of the windows 7 control panel. The two icons it creates are Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi) and SPDIF Out (Creative SB X-Fi). On my setup where I had the card running to an A/V receiver I use the speaker icon to get the sound card to work with my receiver. The problems that I came across were that:

1) All the settings are controlled from the creative audio control panel, this means that when you plug in your headset to the front I/O dock that this card comes with you have to set the sound card to headset in the creative audio control panel instead of the windows control panel. This also means that the headsets that you plug into the I/O dock DONT show up as plugged in on the sound icon for windows 7.

2) When you have a toslink digital optical cable running from the sound card to an A/V receiver it hands over control of the volume to the A/V receiver so unlike onboard sound you wont be able to increase or reduce the volume from inside of windows you will have to increase or reduce the volume using the remote control for the A/V receiver. It is extremely inconvenient always having to reach for the remote when I want to raise or lower the volume, before when I had onboard sound I could raise or lower the volume from my keyboards volume knob.

3) When you have a toslink digital optical cable running from the sound card to an A/V receiver and you plug in a headset to the sound card it will play sound on both the speakers and the headset even if you have the "mute speakers when headset is detected" option checked in the creative labs control panel. This means that I have to manually mute my speakers with the A/V receiver remote every time I plug in my headsets to the sound card.

4) Every time that I hook up my Sennheiser PC 360 Headset for Pro Gaming's microphone connector to the microphone jack on the front I/O dock I get a horrible static noise in the headset that isnt present when I only have the headset connector plugged in. I havent figured out any way to stop the static noise yet but if I cant figure out a way to stop it that means my expensive gaming headset will be useless for online gaming and I will have to use a USB headset that I was using before to talk with friends over teamspeak or vent which is very disappointing when you buy a gaming sound card and expect it to work with your gaming headset.

Pros
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- Software automatically checks for updates when its installed.
- Easy installation with plenty of pictures in the quick start guide.
- Comes with EAX, X-Fi CMSS-3D, DTS Connect, Dolby Digital Live, and X-Fi Crystalizer.
- Clean, crisp sound with my speakers or when I only have the headset jack plugged in.
- Much better then onboard sound with a good speaker system or headset to complement the sound card.

Cons
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- Any headset with a 3.5mm connector I plug in makes a horrible static noise as soon as I plug in a microphone to the sound card.
- Made in China.
- No manuals other then a quick start guide in case you run into issues.
- I came across many issues using this with my headset and A/V receiver (read the review area to see them).
- Minimal amount of protective packaging, the card came in an anti static bag but it wasnt sealed.
- Packing looked like the card was used, the cardboard that the card sits in was torn.
- Expensive if you dont buy it when its on special, I purchased it when it was on sale for $100 but ive seen it go for as high as $200.

Conclusion
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I love this sound card but it is very difficult to use when you first purchase it partly because of the lack of documentation. The sound card has crystal clear sound and many great features but I wish creative labs had experimented a little bit more with A/V receivers and headsets so that it wouldnt have so many annoying issues for owners using this card with an A/V receiver and headset. This card would make a great addition to any gaming pc that is still using onboard sound but try to pick it up while its on special instead of paying full price for it as its not really an essential device that is needed for the pc like a good video card, motherboard, or cpu.

I got this sound card because it has optical out, which I can use with my Astro A40s and Astro Mixamp. Also I can use that optical out for capturing high quality audio via tosslink optical cable to go in sync with video from my Black Magic Decklink Extreme 3D. Sound is 100% better overall, honestly couldn't ask for more. Thanks Creative!

I am very pleased with this sound card. I also had the old X-fi Fatal1ty series card (another very nice card). I upgraded because I wanted PCI-E and because I to be able to use an optical cable. It uses DTS Connect (tm) to encode 5.1 surround and I can receive full surround (or upconvert) from a single optical cable. It works like a charm on Windows 7 x64 (and Vista x64 before 7). People often complain about drivers, but I have always been very happy with Creative's drivers. They have been good about supported x64, supporting the latest versions of Windows, and they even freely provided Alchemy to handle older games in Vista and 7. The front console is a nice feature too. Overall it is an excellent card and, I think, well worth the money.

I have to say that the overall performance of this car is fantastic.
I have a logitech 530 speaker system which I was about to replace.
It was combined with a sb audigy, but after buying this card, I completely
changed my mind. It was like waking the dead. The only bad thing I have to say was when I recieved it, the I/o drive was defective. I live in Mo.
and creative is in Oklahoma. but after getting an rma, it only took eight days from the time I mailed them the broken one, until there was a new one on my door step. Their warranty service is great. If you want great sound
and want to upset the neighbors, this is the card to buy. JF