Creative X-fi Sound Card
I just purchased the Creative X-Fi: Extreme Music Sound Card. It sounds really good.
The Creative X-Fi is thier latest Sound Card system. Creative has a reputation of being very good in the audio industry and I consider them the leader in Soundcards.
I did have some problems with the installation of the card. I first took out my first replacement card (yuk) and put this card in. I booted the machine up and put in the Installation CD. it took off. I selected Complete installation. Why not? And it worked. THen I went online and updated the drivers. Why not?
After a reboot I noticed my Processing was at 100%. a process dllml.exe took up all the processing. It was installed from the creative package. So I tried to uninstall and start over. Well that's the begining of a turbulant time in my life. I wouldn't uninstall. After installing uninstalling installing uninstalling and not having it work, I went online to creative. Creative finally told me what to do. Using their \audio\drivers\setup.exe it uninstalled the backdoor way. Then I installed the CD, but using the "Minimal applications: optimized for gaming" settings (after all I was using this for BF2). Yay! It worked with out a problem.
Just for kicks I started reading the Tweakguide.com's BF2 guide. It shows how to maximize the Audio settings. And there is a specific setting for "Creative X-Fi" so I selected. Program CRASHES. WTF? Try again. and again. nothign. I look back in the guide and it references the soundblaster's website. You have to look closely and find the X-Fi Faq and it discusses specifically FOR BF2 how to fix it. It has to do if you have previous versions of Creative software installed (which I did). Ironically the fix uses the same setup program. Uninstall, reinstall. So I do it. BAM IT WORKS.
So I go into BF2. I fix the seting to Creative X-Fi. Set the quality to Ultra-High (a setting for Creative X-Fi). load game. Wow. what a difference. I have bad hearing as it is and let me say I can hear where those sniper shots are coming from and how close they are to hitting me. Absolutely awesome.
So is the card worth it. Yes it is. There are 4 versions: Xtreme Music (that's me), Platinum, Fata1ity, and Extreme Pro. Mine was the cheapest card at $110, with a $40 Rebate. So I got a good card with a good price. If you have the $ you can get the higher end, which has a remote and stuff. But for me I'm set!
The Creative X-Fi is thier latest Sound Card system. Creative has a reputation of being very good in the audio industry and I consider them the leader in Soundcards.
I did have some problems with the installation of the card. I first took out my first replacement card (yuk) and put this card in. I booted the machine up and put in the Installation CD. it took off. I selected Complete installation. Why not? And it worked. THen I went online and updated the drivers. Why not?
After a reboot I noticed my Processing was at 100%. a process dllml.exe took up all the processing. It was installed from the creative package. So I tried to uninstall and start over. Well that's the begining of a turbulant time in my life. I wouldn't uninstall. After installing uninstalling installing uninstalling and not having it work, I went online to creative. Creative finally told me what to do. Using their \audio\drivers\setup.exe it uninstalled the backdoor way. Then I installed the CD, but using the "Minimal applications: optimized for gaming" settings (after all I was using this for BF2). Yay! It worked with out a problem.
Just for kicks I started reading the Tweakguide.com's BF2 guide. It shows how to maximize the Audio settings. And there is a specific setting for "Creative X-Fi" so I selected. Program CRASHES. WTF? Try again. and again. nothign. I look back in the guide and it references the soundblaster's website. You have to look closely and find the X-Fi Faq and it discusses specifically FOR BF2 how to fix it. It has to do if you have previous versions of Creative software installed (which I did). Ironically the fix uses the same setup program. Uninstall, reinstall. So I do it. BAM IT WORKS.
So I go into BF2. I fix the seting to Creative X-Fi. Set the quality to Ultra-High (a setting for Creative X-Fi). load game. Wow. what a difference. I have bad hearing as it is and let me say I can hear where those sniper shots are coming from and how close they are to hitting me. Absolutely awesome.
So is the card worth it. Yes it is. There are 4 versions: Xtreme Music (that's me), Platinum, Fata1ity, and Extreme Pro. Mine was the cheapest card at $110, with a $40 Rebate. So I got a good card with a good price. If you have the $ you can get the higher end, which has a remote and stuff. But for me I'm set!
Labels: Tech
posted by Sliver @ 2:54 PM
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