Creative showing the strain...

Giftmacher · 09-03-2007, 08:28 AM

Just an update in case anyone is interested in how X-Fi drivers and Vista are getting on... Well it's still not good, 4Gb + X-Fi still equals trouble, and a spat developed over the weekend I thought you guys might want to know about.

It would appear that after some goading on the beta driver feed back forum Dev's responded somewhat negatively.

Now I do feel sorry for these guys as they are copping a lot of flack lately, but I can't help wondering if the truth came out in the heat of the moment. Certainly, even though the original outburst is now gone another post expressing similar sentiments remains . In essence the Creative Dev line seems to be, "no problem here mate you're lucky you even get driver fixes, keep on complaining and that's what'll happen"

Anyone looking to purchase an X-Fi and Vista should bear that in mind... caveat empor and all that.

Much as I'm a Creative fan, I'm really beginning to think a sound card isn't worth the trouble any more. Certainly not when an acknowledged problem isn't fixed, and manufacturers threaten to leave it that way in the face of angry customers.

Gift.

Fozzik · 09-03-2007, 08:51 AM

That's pretty sad. I'll tell you what, though... with Microsoft operating systems on 99% of the world's consumer desktops and laptops, and with Microsoft's guerrilla tactics for pushing companies out of the market or out of business (like freezing hardware accelerated audio out of Direct X), it's probably very very difficult for a company to keep up.

Should Creative be more on top of bug fixes? Definitely. Their drivers and software have always been rather slow to be updated. But I don't place all the blame on them, for sure... this is more Microsoft's fault, in my book, for intentionally changing the rules and maintaining a moving target that driver coders have to try and hit.

I have no idea why Microsoft decided to punish Creative... could be that Creative didn't want to play ball with the ultra-intrusive DRM that Vista is built on, or it could be anything else. It's just sad that a single company can get away with affecting the market and competition this way without any consequences.

Creative probably will die out, at least out of the soundcard market... and Microsoft will win again. The only ones who really lose are us.

Giftmacher · 09-03-2007, 09:14 AM

I know what you mean, hell this 32 bit/64 bit Vista nonsense can't have helped either. That said though, I am disappointed that Creative haven't fought back a bit and at least temporarily hired on more coders to help. There's such an air of desperation about them lately and I'm genuinely concerned over the amount of time fixes are taking.

I really hate to do a good company down, especially when it's not all their fault but when you build your own system this is exactly the kind of problem people need to hear about. No one seems to even know when a fix is due... Auzentech released a fix date of September, but as these drivers are coming from Creative I'm highly sceptical (their current Beta doesn't even fix the 4Gb issues and it's already September).

I dunno, it's a sad day for me anyhow, I recommended an SB-Free gaming system to a friend for the first time ever last week. I told him if you're unlucky enough to have an issue it's just not worth the trouble, add the card in later when it's fixed.

Gift.

Slide · 09-03-2007, 01:44 PM

I find it hard to feel sorry for Creative, sorry. There's too much history of them bullying out competitors through Litigation* so that their substandard, overpriced products with awful drivers have no competition in the premium soundcard marketspace. They are the Bose of soundcards.

And given that they have something like 7-8%** penetration of the market on GAMER pc's I really don't understand why DX should be catering for them, or why developers dont optimise the none creative path more.

* Aureal
** see - http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

rabb1t · 09-03-2007, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Giftmacher

I dunno, it's a sad day for me anyhow, I recommended an SB-Free gaming system to a friend for the first time ever last week.

I think you should consider the opposite... these problems are really only related to Vista and 4 gig. You really don't benefit at all with 4 gig right now, even more so when you are talking about gaming. So, going with 2 instead of 4, not a huge deal. However, if you consider going with no X-Fi card vs. having one, that's a much bigger deal.

I'd say do the opposite for now, recommend they stick to 2 gig and have the X-Fi card and Vista instead of recommending they go with 4 gig, Vista, and no X-Fi card.

Yes, sadly there aren't many people who get a sound card, and only a few games support the EAX 5.0 code on the X-Fi, but I can say wholeheartedly that if your ears can tell the difference, the difference between an X-Fi coded game vs. no-coded is huge.

(Wheee crappy connection for the loose, like 10 fricken min for this one reply

)

Giftmacher · 09-03-2007, 06:36 PM

I did say 4Gb isn't worth it (and tried to steer them away from Vista for now for that matter), but they wanted to "future proof" as much as possible and were dead set on it. That being the case the X-Fi had to go /shrug, not that I'm convinced it makes much difference any more though. I've yet to see any hard data showing more than an FPS or two here and there, certainly nothing worth getting the card for if you're dead set on a 4Gb system.

Gift.

rabb1t · 09-03-2007, 06:43 PM

I guess it's their choice, but future proofing like that just doesn't make sense. It's very easy to add on 2 more gig at a later point in time if you don't think you have enough.

I'd say it's more than a small difference though. Without checking benchmarks I believe it can improve FPS speeds by 10-20%. An additional 2 gig isn't really likely to give him more than a 1-2% gain right now, if any at all. And the future... where games really truly take advantage of 4 gig... you are probably looking at closer to 2+ years than you are not. As I've always said, the time you will likely want to consider 4 gig as 'standard' for gaming will likely be when you are talking about 4 gig of DDR3.

Giftmacher · 09-04-2007, 05:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rabb1t

Without checking benchmarks I believe it can improve FPS speeds by 10-20%.

Well checking bench marks I see (e.g.) 10% is more like the maximum, and not in every scenario (NB the really big boosts require X-RAM), to me that isn't enough. Sure in the best case when you're playing at CPU bound resolutions that sounds nice when it adds an extra 10FPS. However, when you're cruising along at 100FPS+, who would notice? In reality that best case 10% is pretty minimal when you're bouncing up the pixel scale. Not only does 10% equate to a far less impressive 3FPS when your rig is pushing ~30FPS, it's also far from guaranteed.

Take the above and couple it with multicore CPUs becoming the norm and I'm increasingly sceptical of the performance gains from off loading CPU work to a sound card. Sound quality is where X-Fis gain now, nowhere else, unless you grab a card with X-RAM and have one of the few games which support it. And personally, as a Vista user, given the choice between more RAM and a sound card I'm going to go with the former.

Sure games will cap out at 2Gb but Vista certainly doesn't, it'll use just about everything you can throw at it. Hell my system idles with 1Gb used up; 4Gb gives head room. From my experience I believe an extra 2Gb of RAM will more consistently give performance gains (albeit small for the moment) than an X-Fi will, this goes double when there's a such a strong chance said X-Fi might just bring your whole system crashing down anyway. A theoretical performance gain is as good as none at all...

Gift.

Fozzik · 09-06-2007, 10:12 AM

My latest check of the Creative bug reporting page shows one person (item #44) saying that at least one of the problems has been resolved. Not sure whether that will fix everything, but hopefully they are moving in the right direction. Also, creative acknowledges (item #13) the x64/4GB problem... so we know they are working on it (however slowly).

Honestly, every time I've started to feel the way you do Gift, some game comes along...like Vanguard...and reminds me why I like to have hardware accelerated sound in my PC. It really isn't that much money to pay, and in the case of a game like Vanguard, it comes in very handy (or at least it did).

Back when I was playing Vanguard, there were many people reporting a difference of ~10FPS pretty consistently when enabling hardware acceleration with an X-Fi, and that was when the game was only averaging about 20-30 FPS on their machines. A lot of people that didn't have an X-Fi just disabled sound to get the same boost... but that's something more like a 30% or higher improvement from having an X-Fi installed. Now, granted, Vanguard isn't a game that should really act as an example, since the coding was in pretty bad shape... but you see where I'm coming from.

If Creative doesn't get things straightened out soon, I'll definitely be reconsidering including soundcards in my recommended systems. It really is a lot of trouble regardless of who's fault it is (if you are someone who ends up running into problems). Really the only one affected right now would be my $2k recommendation, since it has 4GB of RAM and Vista 64-bit.

rabb1t · 09-06-2007, 07:52 PM

The newest example would be Bioshock. I can always tell what's X-Fi enhanced because the booms make my subwoofer bounce like crazy.

In a few months we'll also have HG:L. That's all I can say on that.

I'd say that it's worth it. Conflicts are extremely rare, and I'd say that the remaining issues (Creative has already fixed some) should be fixed by the time service pack 1 hits around the end of the year.

Giftmacher · 09-15-2007, 08:27 PM

Dirty Hax FTW I've not tried this myself yet but it sounds promising

Gift.

evilsofa · 09-15-2007, 11:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Giftmacher

Dirty Hax FTW I've not tried this myself yet but it sounds promising

The author didn't even test it on a X-Fi because he doesn't have one! Others replied saying it didn't work.

Creative should hire him.

Giftmacher · 09-16-2007, 01:15 PM

Well one or two people can't get it to work but that seems to have remedied itself (read the rest of the thread). I've watched this user hack drivers before and he is quite reliable usually, and in fairness he does at least warn people he hasn't personally tested this solution. I have to say if the problems with 4Gb weren't so pronounced it wouldn't be worth testing but it's hard to make things worse right now so /shrug. It's a pity Creative aren't similarly up front regarding their testing, or as swift and communicative when providing fixes like Auzentech

. Desperate times and all that... (not that it's a major hax, modding the .inf file to make the drivers work on Creative X-Fi's should work in theory.)

Gift.

jonyak · 09-20-2007, 03:25 PM

Back before I switched back to xp, I used a hacked version of the old xp drivers in vista that gave full functionality to the card. i was done by a guy named puxx or something.

I always found it funny that he had made a fully functional driver set before creative did.

Giftmacher · 09-22-2007, 08:53 PM

The Youpax drivers? Yep they still are a good bet for people having trouble.

Gift.

Slide · 09-22-2007, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jonyak

Back before I switched back to xp, I used a hacked version of the old xp drivers in vista that gave full functionality to the card. i was done by a guy named puxx or something.

Did exactly the same thing with XP when that came out, Aureal had been sued by Creative, countersued and won the case but collapsed under the legal fees. Creative promptly bought the remains of the company from an asset stripper and buried the product. Fortunately there were hacked XP drivers released as a final "fsck you" to Creative.

jonyak · 09-26-2007, 12:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Giftmacher

The Youpax drivers? Yep they still are a good bet for people having trouble.

Gift.

yup those are the ones.

evilsofa · 10-02-2007, 01:38 AM

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series Vista Driver 2.15.0003 was released today, October 1, and is reported to be found here, though all I get is a white page.

There is a thread on the Creative forum thread on it, here. Does it fix the 4GB problem or not? It's hard to tell, but the thread seems to suggest that it doesn't, and it may introduce new problems as well. Creative does not seem to have given a changelog.

One problem may be that it seems to be difficult and complicated to uninstall old drivers cleanly; one of the posts points towards detailed uninstall directions, which I link here:

http://nomoregoatsoup.wordpress.com/...tall-problems/

rabb1t · 10-03-2007, 01:32 PM

Not really on topic for the sound card, but this article has a lot of bla bla on the state of the company overall.

Anandtech - The Business of Technology: Creative Labs

Giftmacher · 10-03-2007, 02:54 PM

Yup agree that many problems are caused by poor clean ups (as I've mentioned elsewhere) and I have to say I'm not surprised by the Anandtech assessment. It's sad really, but the company does seem to be aching from top to toe right now and I think it could be terminal.

Gift.