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CREATIVE (TM)
X-FI XtremeGamer
FATAL1TY PRO SERIES
X-RAM and CMSS-3D
My first response when I handed this card was, “What has Creative developed now that could make gaming or any other sound produced by my computer better?” Well, being a little skeptical about the claims of the offloading would provide up to 15% increase in performance. I took a few benchmarks with the present Audigy II card which was in the rig already. The conventional benchmark software had provided some insight on the performance, but more then likely it would be up to the gamer themself to be able to distinguish the performance gain and sound quality. Though one point that needs to be clear on the benchmark is the game being used for the benchmark needs to utilize the technology the sound card is capable of dishing out. This would be the equivalent of driving the world’s faster car, but doing so in heavy rush hour grid lock traffic. The other comparison would be during several sessions of listening to a range of personal MP3s which have been saved over the years in a multitude of different compression formats which results in loss of sound quality.
Shown here is the 64Mb of X-RAM which assists with the offloading of the sound processing.
The results were a little mixed when it came to playing games and comparing what we heard. The Audigy II card we were comparing the Xtreme gamer against also has CMSS technology (version 2). The gaming performance was noticeable by the two gamers who used the rig with Audigy II and later with the Fatal1ty card. What the percentage of increase was not able to be documented by any of our standard benchmark software, but the two gamers claimed the difference is enough for some to drop the dime and get the newer technology.
X-Fi Crystalizer ™
The X-FI chip is a telltale sign to those on-lookers that you demand highest in quality sound.
The crystallizer technology which comes with this sound card release from Creative is pretty impressive to say the least. The Crystalizer technology is able to take your average MP3 or WMA file and convert it back to sound studio quality which to put it simply is the difference of listening to your home stereo in mono mode and at a flip of a switch your drenched in surround sound quality. What were very noticeable were songs which had drums and cymbals where the drum bass were clearer and one can clearly hear the drum stick striking the cymbals. Now for those of you who happen to have a high quality headset, select a song where in the beginning of the song the artist takes a deep breath without any other instruments playing and do this with your old card and then again with this Creative X-Fi card and see if the hair on the back of your neck stands up. I was able to get four out of five co-workers to respond with the same response, “What is the name of that card? And what did it cost you?” Of course the fifth person was someone who already had another one Creative’s cards and said he did hear a difference, but since he had a card which he purchased sometime in the past two years, wouldn’t consider purchasing this card for the price. Also for those of you who are recording your own music, this sound card does support ASIO with as low as one millisecond latency. The ASIO technology is a standard most of the present day sound recording studios use and the do it yourselfers out there are looking for.
To get a better insight on what X-Fi can provide you, check out Creative's demo pages located here. These demos are very true to what you get from the card.
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