[shermhead]

I mean I have an Audigy 2 which is a hardware soundcard so why would it benefit me to get a X-FI? So that I have have 50,000 midi instruments playing at once? What really would the performance gain be in games and for a non-audiophile will i really notice any clarity of sound?

EDIT: Using 4.1 Klipshe 400w computer speakers

[rabb1t]

A non-audiophile isn't likely to notice a change between a 4 and the X-Fi in normal operation. The tonal differences are pretty minor. However, there is a decent jump from the 2 to the 4 that I noticed, so, going from 2 to X-Fi you'd probably hear a difference.

Now, put something like Prey in there, a game specifically X-Fi enhanced, and it will blow the poop outa non-X-Fi sound. Seriously, the diff between an X-Fi enhanced game and a regular sound game is like night and day. Though there aren't a lot with it currently on the market, many of the bigger titles that are in the works will include it.

[shermhead]

Originally Posted by rabb1t

A non-audiophile isn't likely to notice a change between a 4 and the X-Fi in normal operation. The tonal differences are pretty minor. However, there is a decent jump from the 2 to the 4 that I noticed, so, going from 2 to X-Fi you'd probably hear a difference.

Now, put something like Prey in there, a game specifically X-Fi enhanced, and it will blow the poop outa non-X-Fi sound. Seriously, the diff between an X-Fi enhanced game and a regular sound game is like night and day. Though there aren't a lot with it currently on the market, many of the bigger titles that are in the works will include it.

So FPS performance wise about the same?

Any is this X-FI enabled anything different then the DSP effects on EAX 1,2,3,4 etc?

[evilsofa]

Other than the misbranded XtremeAudio (which is really an Audigy SE), under WinXP, the X-Fi cards took over sound effects work from the CPU, improving FPS, sometimes significantly. A lot of people don't realize how much CPU time rendering high quality audio takes when playing games. To quote Creative, the work taken over included "sample-rate conversion, mixing, 3D spatialization using HRTFs, filtering, and effects processing". If you were playing with settings that left you CPU-bound, having to do the audio processing as well would reduce FPS.

Under WinXP, the X-Fi cards did this acceleration through the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) for DirectSound and DirectSound3D, and through OpenAL. Games would support the hardware acceleration through either HAL, OpenAL, or both. In Vista, HAL was removed, leaving OpenAL. It seems like most games up to this point supported the acceleration through HAL and not OpenAL. To work around this, Creative has been doing a thing called Project Alchemy.

That's how I understand it. Correct me if I am mistaken. I won't testify on actual sound quality of anything as I am half deaf.

[rabb1t]

Originally Posted by shermhead

So FPS performance wise about the same?

Well, that’s really difficult to judge. No one has done any tests on that. It is more powerful, it is more current, does that mean it is better in game x? Probably. As the cards have improved and become more complex, so have the games, so again, tough to say for sure.

Any is this X-FI enabled anything different then the DSP effects on EAX 1,2,3,4 etc?

Well… X-Fi has EAX 5.0, while your Audigy 2 only has 3.0 support. Not to mention other technical things, not all of which I understand, but I do know it can reproduce way more sounds at once.

As to comparing non-X-Fi enabled to enabled… it would be like comparing a flat weak sounding recording to an actual live orchestra… or comparing old school non-accelerated sound to the first Creative Labs card with EAX coding.

It's... difficult to describe.

It looks like now isn't a good time due to the price, but if you pick up an X-Fi XtremeGamer (it looks a touch cheaper on Provantage) and get the demo of Prey, then set your speakers to the 'normal' volume you use for games you'll quite easily see a huge difference. The sound is louder, sharper, clearer, speaker positioning is excelent... like I said, you can't really describe it, you have to experience it with speakers you are used to.

[shermhead]

Originally Posted by rabb1t

Well, that’s really difficult to judge. No one has done any tests on that. It is more powerful, it is more current, does that mean it is better in game x? Probably. As the cards have improved and become more complex, so have the games, so again, tough to say for sure.



Well… X-Fi has EAX 5.0, while your Audigy 2 only has 3.0 support. Not to mention other technical things, not all of which I understand, but I do know it can reproduce way more sounds at once.

As to comparing non-X-Fi enabled to enabled… it would be like comparing a flat weak sounding recording to an actual live orchestra… or comparing old school non-accelerated sound to the first Creative Labs card with EAX coding.

It's... difficult to describe.

It looks like now isn't a good time due to the price, but if you pick up an X-Fi XtremeGamer (it looks a touch cheaper on Provantage) and get the demo of Prey, then set your speakers to the 'normal' volume you use for games you'll quite easily see a huge difference. The sound is louder, sharper, clearer, speaker positioning is excelent... like I said, you can't really describe it, you have to experience it with speakers you are used to.

Well I did a little research on FPS game performance and combining the gains from the audigy 2 vs audigy 4 and the audigy 4 vs X-FI and its very marginal.

I really dont care much for the DSP effects of EAX.. its like reverb, echoing, channel delays etc that EAX 3 can do fine... actually if theres like a lot of gunshots in a sewer tunnel its really annoying.

Creative did gimp the audigy 2 though with their XP drivers/software being as bare minimum as can be (doesnt even allow channel mixing in windows volume app!) theres a free 3rd party driver/app at www.kxproject.com which has tons of advanced/simple configuration of your older creative soundcard settings.

I believe in maxing out the viability of my hardware and is why my 7800 256MB GT GPU is still running strong at 425mhz lol.

Thanks for the input though.. maybe I will have to hear for myself X-FI optimized games to believe it.

also my Real Hollywood Plus PCI DVD decoder card also going strong for 8 years now lol

[Malosar]

Still $69 at Frys where I got mine from, definitely worth it, even if just for full OpenAL support for future games on Vista (of course some current like Vanguard, and old as well).

[rabb1t]

Originally Posted by shermhead

Well I did a little research on FPS game performance and combining the gains from the audigy 2 vs audigy 4 and the audigy 4 vs X-FI and its very marginal.

Yeah but you have to consider some things... a 5-10% increase on FPS for a sound card is a big deal. So if you are looking at a 1-2% gain for the change over that is fairly significant for that part.

Also, are you looking at the exact same game? Or are you comparing game x, y, and z. As above, as the games get more complex the difference would be greater between the 2 and the X-Fi.

I really dont care much for the DSP effects of EAX.. its like reverb, echoing, channel delays etc that EAX 3 can do fine... actually if theres like a lot of gunshots in a sewer tunnel its really annoying.

Well... those kind of effects can be done a lot more subtly and ... correctly? ... with the X-Fi compared to the older cards. From what little I've done with it (haven't had the $ to play many games lately and many have been strat types) the X-Fi does things like fading sounds a lot better than the older cards which tend to snap sound effects on or off.

Thanks for the input though.. maybe I will have to hear for myself X-FI optimized games to believe it.

Totally. Like I said, it's not really something that can be described.

[rabb1t]

Originally Posted by Malosar

Still $69 at Frys where I got mine from

There ya go. That'd be ideal if ya could drive over and get one. You could then "test it out" and if you don't like it for some reason you can return it and claim it was a gift for someone that they didn't need/like. (If they don't take it back for that reason, which I've used myself you can tell them you got it for a friend, and the friend opened it, but you didn't know he has a mac. )

[evilsofa]

Originally Posted by rabb1t

you can tell them you got it for a friend, and the friend opened it, but you didn't know he has a mac.

X-Fi works fine on the Mac, so don't use that excuse!

[rabb1t]

hehehehe I didn't know that.

[Aristotle]

After reading another thread approx1.5months ago on these forums I ventured out to get the cheapest OpenAL enabled X-Fi card (ie non XtremeAudio) and the differences were night and day in terms of performance at the extreme end (dungeon crawling with a fg).

Previously I would stutter at every pull losing between 2-10 seconds from a lockup. After installing the new X-Fi card, at worse it was only a 2 second lockup every 10 pulls.

My older system has a hardware enabled Audigy card and it too works very well - however be wary as not all Audigy cards will be hardware enabled in VG.

So thanks to the discovery that the good people in this forum made, my VG experience improved greatly with a simple add-on.

[tennex]

I bought the gamer because it was on sale. Sort of an impulse by. Coming from onboard high definition audio (that was more than adequate) and previously an audigy2 value, I would have to say I am not really feeling it. Then again, I dont play any current gen games, just call of duty2 and WoW. If you have an audigy 2 or onboard high definition audio, I would put it at the bottom of things to get. Also, it was cool at first, but once I got threw playing with the crystalizer and new effects I really could have done without it. If you play VG, get the X-Fi.

[rabb1t]

Go get the demo of Prey, you'll quite quickly hear the difference between normal sound and X-Fi enhanced sound.

VG is poop for sound use, it really doesn't at all bring out the niceness of the X-Fi. It's really just about getting faster speeds with VG.

(Heh, guess I already mentioned this. )

[Carnivac]

Not sure if it will be as good as an actual Creative X-Fi but Auzentech have released the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1, will be interesting to see if they actually write their very own drivers for it & if it will be totally compatable within Vista 32/64 bit.

[rabb1t]

Released on paper to my knowledge. I ran some searches for it (and the Asus card) the other day and found nothing.