Crikey, the gamer's X-Fi is pricey!

[Pete]

But apparently Jawed gets the Ring Topology chip he's been hoping for.

The Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro, priced at US$399.99, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS, priced at US$279.99, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum, priced at US$199.99 and the Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic, priced at US$129.99, will be available this month at Best Buy.

64MB onboard the gamer (Fatal1ty) card--intriguing. But the thing costs as much as a low-top-end video card, which is to say too much for me. The $70AR Audigy 2 Gamer edition at NewEgg looks very reasonable next to $250+, 10000MIPS or not.

OK, I'll post a poll for kicks. Which would you rather put down the extra money for, a PPU or an, erm, APU?

Apologies if this should've been folded into the EAX5 thread, but I wanted to make the Jawed-ring topology reference and used that as an excuse for the nutty poll. =)

 

[ANova]

Ridiculous prices.

 

[MasterBaiter]

I'm thinking Creative has finally lost it! They better be able to justify damage like that. I am going to have a pretty difficult time convincing myself why I need to spend $100+ on one of these. The only upside is I did apply to the Creative settlement case, so I should be able to get 25% off

We'll just have to wait and see if these are accurate. Doesn't seem that they have a bottom end card unless they consider $130 bottom...

-Edit- Linky: http://www.creative.com/press/releases/welcome.asp?pid=12163

 

[Farid]

Magic is a good thing

To achieve the Xtreme Fidelity audio standard, Sound Blaster X-Fi cards draw immense power from the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity processor

Sounds like magic is in use in this Audio Processing Unit, that easily explain the $399.99 tag price.
Only magic can explain a price like this for a friggin' sound card, anyway.

I expect VIA to soon introduce the NBPU and SBPU, by the way.

 

[MasterBaiter]

Another link: http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-22364-2435-x-x-x

Quoteth "The Elite Pro and the Fatal1ty cards also have 64MB of RAM onboard. The sound card memory can store audio files that would otherwise take up space in system memory and eat up CPU time if compression is used. The memory will also let the cards support up to 128 simultaneous voices, or distinct sounds. EA's Battlefield 2 is one of the first games that will take advantage of the X-Fi's onboard memory and 128-voice support."

128 voices sounds good to me, but uhmm... not $275-400 good.

 

[Rur0ni]

Price tag is a bit outrageous. I was planning to buy one and some rediculously good headphones. Set me back $400 on audio setup?

 

[_xxx_]

The cheapest version will do it. If the chip proves to be good, I'll buy that in a few months. No way in hell would I ever pay $400.- for a sound card, unless it's a part that can be used for some serious recording work (which I already have and that much better than anything Creative could ever dream of, thank you).

Anything above $100 for a gaming sound card is too much.

 

[CosmoKramer]

Hahahahahaha!

Good one.

 

[Monty]

im impressed, gamer one is only going to cost $40 more in the UK

looks like someone over in the usa is finally realising that $1 does not convert to £1.

And why is everyone so overly annoyed at the price, i agree i would like it to go down abit, but that kinda goes for everything out there. Sound cards generally out live most other components in pcs, personally have had my audigy for years, and in that time gone through 3 gpus and 2 cpus, seems to me you get a hell of a lot more value for money out of a sound card than either gpus and cpus and yet people are willing to spend £100's to get them for short periods of time.

and i can also say that ive listened to a lot more music than i have played games so thats added even more worth to the sound card.

Monty

 

[Jawed]

But apparently Jawed gets the Ring Topology chip he's been hoping for.

Actually Cell has a rather nice ring topology in it. I can't imagine this is anything to get worked up about.

I think a dual-core CPU is a much better investment than a new sound card.

I'm still using my Soundblaster Live! Value (erm, I know there's an "!" in there somewhere) from 1998, though I've been considering switching over to the AV8's on-board sound...

But it'll be interesting to find out if this kind of technology can totally eliminate sound stutter in games (though I imagine dual-core CPU would do the job).

Jawed

 

[John Reynolds]

I was really looking forard to buying a X-Fi board, but not at these prices.

 

[_xxx_]

Guys, ring topology is something completely different. Not there in Cell and also not in that sound chip.

EDIT: it could be a so-called logical ring, but that won't make it a ring topology.

 

[thomase]

They should make a version that includes onboard RAM without the I/O drive. Anyway, if the RAM is being used to store audio samples in order to avoid transfering them across the PCI bus multiple times, I'm not sure how this could be taken advantage of without developer support, which means that it will a limited benefit. The $129 version is fine for me.

 

[MasterBaiter]

I would assume that the onboard memory would be handy if you were doing music production as well, but I think you're correct thomase in regards to taking advantage of the onboard memory. It will require dev. support. I would also like to see a version with the onboard memory, but without the I/O bay.

 

[Richard]

Get the fatality card $80 cheaper:

http://us.creative.com/local/1/promo/fatal1ty/welcome.asp

 

[Guden Oden]

if the RAM is being used to store audio samples in order to avoid transfering them across the PCI bus multiple times, I'm not sure how this could be taken advantage of without developer support

It would be done transparently of course, like a CPU cache for example. You don't need to explicitly support a cache, it's there and does its thing quietly in the background.

I assume the card simply mirrors audio in on-board RAM until it runs out of space and then starts overwriting the least used data.

 

[DSC]

Here's a hint. Only the Elite Pro has the CS4398 DACs, same as the A4P and the EMU1212M. Lesser cards have lesser DACs, and the $99 EMU 0404 will whoop them in sound quality dept thanks of the top of the line flagship AKM AK4395 DAC on it. Bend over and be screwed by Creative again.

 

[Jawed]

Bend over and be screwed by Creative again.

This plus their execrable driver support over the years, are incredibly good reasons never to buy a Creative product.

Jawed

 

[John Reynolds]

Get the fatality card $80 cheaper:

http://us.creative.com/local/1/promo/fatal1ty/welcome.asp

There's just something inside that makes me reluctant to buy a product marketed on the gaming handle of a guy named Wendel.

 

[DSC]

Don't even bother wasting good money on this junk. It resamples, it's not gonna sound good unless you buy the most expensive model with the best DACs, you'll get the "wonderful" Creative drivers and yes, early adopters will be bitten by some horrible bug. Remember the squeal of death on the Audigy?

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,48708,00.asp