Items tagged with X-Fi
Here lately, MSI has definitely been on the notebook kick. Day after day, we've seen new laptop after new laptop emerge to fit pretty much every budget and every wish list. Today, however, the company is breaking from the norm to talk up its sound equipment; more specifically, its X-Fi-enabled motherboards.MSI asserts that of all the mainboards on the market now that are implementing Creative's X-Fi audio technology, it is the only one left who insists on utilizing a true hardware decoder solution. In other words, its products come loaded with a Creative DSP, DAC and ADC audio decoder chip as well as its optimized Creative software solution. MSI takes aim at its rivals by asserting that "many...
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Not too far back, there was a time when it was inconceivable that a motherboard had anything other than a green or mustard colored PCB that had a few sockets for the CPU and DIMMs, maybe a hard drive connector or two, and a floppy drive connection. Keyboards and mice were typically PS/2 based, although a COM port sufficed for those still attached to their serial mice, and the list of input/output options were quite few. The late 90's brought about the rise of the Universal Serial Bus, a new standard for interfacing with devices intended to retire legacy serial and parallel ports (although that still has yet to fully come about). Integrated LAN options as well...
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Creative has announced their ALchemy project which is aimed at providing Sound Blaster X-Fi drivers for Windows Vista. In Vista, Microsoft has removed the Hardware Abstraction Layer(HAL), which DirecSound and DirectSound3D require. While games that use OpenAL still work, those that use DirectSound would face problems, until now. The project is still in the beta phase, but it seems promising. "The good news is that the Creative ALchemy Project allows you to run your favorite DirectSound3D games on Windows Vista as the developers intended - with full hardware accelerated 3D Audio and EAX support! This is done by translating DirectSound calls into OpenAL. In order for this to happen, a...
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NGOHQ is reporting that Creative Labs is blaming NVIDIA for cracking and other sound quality issues when an X-Fi sound card is installed in an nForce 4 motherboard. This reminds me of the good ol' days of installing the PCI Latency patch on VIA chipset-based motherboards when using a Creative Labs sound card. "We have observed through direct observation of the PCI bus on the nVidia nForce 4 motherboards that when the crackle symptoms are occuring, the Soundblaster X-Fi card PCI bus master memory requests for audio data are being held off (not serviced) for very long intervals. We have observed peak holdoffs of up to 2 milliseconds in...
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The Inquirer sends word that owners of Creative's flagship X-Fi sound cards are up in arms and have formed a petition to have several key fixes and enhancements made to the product. From crackling audio to bloated software and a lack of any significant support for X-Ram, there is plenty for X-Fi owners to complain about. Perhaps the largest issue is the lack of any significant driver release in the last several months as users have been plagued with unresolved issues for an unacceptable amount of time. "The X-Fi processor is supposed to be "The most powerful audio processor in the world" doesn't even offer a hardware Dolby Digital 5.1 Encoder...
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TechReport have managed to get their hands on a new Creative Labs X-Fi Fatal1ty to see whether the bundled I/O ports and 64MB of X-Ram warrant the price increase over cheaper models in the X-Fi product line. Granted, this card features the same X-Fi architecture that impressed us when we reviewed the X-Fi XtremeMusic. However, it appears as though the I/O ports can be had in much cheaper X-Fi versions and the performance benefits of the 64MB of XRam were questionable at best.Only Battlefield 2 and Quake 4 even support X-RAM, and neither's use of the X-Fi Fatal1ty's 64MB of onboard memory results in higher in-game frame rates or superior audio quality. That's a disappointing result, although since...
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Xbit takes on the Creative Labs SoundBlaster X-Fi and has this to say..."Well, we have just got acquainted with the true successor to the legendary sound card family from Creative. It is very nice that the company decided to continue working on the sound processing algorithms focusing on the realistic sounding for headphone listening. This is a pretty logical solution, especially since most users prefer headphones to the traditional acoustic systems. X-Fi will be a true gift for gaming fans, because all new games are expected to support EAX 5.0."Headphones? I dig my Logitech Z-680s personally... Our assessment of the X-Fi is here, for your edification as well....
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When it comes to sound cards, the competition is a lot more "low-profile" than the video card sector. With audio cards, Creative is enjoyed the most success, being the most recognizable name in the market. ExtremeMHZ.com has a review of the Creative Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic, which they feel delivers the best PC audio experience...period. They take a look at the overall hardware and pay an equal amount of attention to the software bundle, which then found equally as impressive."There hasn't been much interest in PC sound cards lately. People are either quite happy with what they got or don't think anything out there that is worth a look. One reason for this is...
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Yeah folks, it's late, but the news keeps on rolling! I'm sure many of you are wanting to get your hands on ATI's new Radeon X1800XT, so I've been looking around the net a bit... nothing. A few sites list them, but the adventure stops with the "out of stock" label. In other news, X-Bit labs has been known for their CPU comparison articles, and today they've added their "Contemporary CPUs and New Games: No Way to Delusions!" article to their arsenal. This is a great read for you CPU shoppers who aren't sure if AMD or Intel has the best gaming processors. Enjoy the news, goodnight all! Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT with Silent-Pipe II @ HardwareZoom "Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce...
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Creative Labs X-Fi @ PC Perspective | HH Perspective "If you're on the fence with the X-Fi, consider gaming as a big factor. At the moment there's no real quality improvement (see 24-bit Crystalizer and CMSS-3D) to audio or performance improvement with the X-Fi (see Game Testing). I would wait a few months to see which titles are going to support X-RAM and then decide on a purchase, otherwise your current Audigy 2 ZS will do you just fine which performs and sounds just as good as the X-Fi (minus the X-RAM)." LapCool 3 (LPC-401) @ Phoronix "Do you own a laptop? Do you have a hard time keeping it on your lap because it's too hot? Well we sometimes do. Most of our reviews here are...
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When someone talks about ways to enhance your gaming experience, we typically focus on faster graphics cards and high resolution monitors. Over the years, this has typically been the only way to dramatically enhance the way games were played. However, with the launch of Doom3 roughly a year ago, the gaming world soon realized that there was much more than graphics in an ideal gaming experience. For the first time, developers focused a significant amount of attention towards the sound effects in the game. The end result was a title whose sounds were as dramatic and intense as its graphics. Gamers were hooked and were anxious to have this new level of realism in all their games. Although the main...
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Yesterday, Digitimes reported that Chaintech was pulling out of the motherboard market, instead focusing on video card and memory products. Well, this morning Chaintech would like to set the record straight. Looks like they are not going anywhere. Chaintech Remains in Motherboard Business! "Chaintech Computer Co., Ltd claims today that it will continue its motherboard business. In addition, Chaintech announced its new name as Walton Chaintech Cooperation, following its 25% stake acquired by Walton Advanced Engineering, the leading IC testing and packaging house. Chaintech denies it will fade away motherboard market to clarify the rumors wide spread recently. Most people recognize...
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