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

How would you spend $200+ to enhance gameplay?

  • GPU/CPU/RAM bump ("traditional" speed boost)

    Votes: 43 52.4%
  • PPU (Ageia PhysX)

    Votes: 21 25.6%
  • "APU" (Creative X-Fi)

    Votes: 6 7.3%
  • Thank you, come again! --Apu (Sorry, couldn't help it)

    Votes: 12 14.6%

  • Total voters
    82
new game in sound card market

What differ from before is that now creative is willing to sell the APU chips to other AIB partners to recoup the development fee.

A 64MB DDR ram chips will cost less than $6 bucks in componnet and productiuon cost nowadays and AIB partner should opt for adding ram in the lower price version($99 price point). However, that probably would create a pricing pressure on Creative branded products. As history clearly shows us, that is the least creative wanted. They enjoy a monopoly market with no competition or pricing pressure. Therefore, it is interesting to see whether the AIB partners will use the chips and compete with Creative themselves. I wonder how strong-arm Creative will be in giving people technical(driver) suppport and flexibility in pricing and board design.
 
The "Live 24bit DSP" chip that Creative sells to mobo makers is the same chip as the ones on the Audigy LS and Live 24bit, it has no hardware acceleration, it's not gonna threaten or compete with their crap in any manner. You'll never see Creative selling the X-Fi chips to 3rd parties. Those Live24bit chips have all the same stupidity as the A2ZS DSP, locked to 48KHz, poor resampling, questionable 24bit 192KHz support, bass management issues(see 3dss review on A4P).
 
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DSC said:
The "Live 24bit DSP" chip that Creative sells to mobo makers is the same chip as the ones on the Audigy LS and Live 24bit, it has no hardware acceleration, it's not gonna threaten or compete with their crap in any manner. You'll never see Creative selling the X-Fi chips to 3rd parties. Those Live24bit chips have all the same stupidity as the A2ZS DSP, locked to 48KHz, poor resampling, questionable 24bit 192KHz support, bass management issues(see 3dss review on A4P).


Please read before comment.

Quote from the Gamespot line:
"Borrowing a page from the graphics manufacturer playbook, Creative will make the X-Fi chip available to other hardware manufacturers, including other sound card companies. Selling the chip to other manufacturers will help make up for development costs and increase the number of X-Fi-enabled devices available in the market. Creative expects to ship the first X-Fi Sound Blaster products later this month on August 22, 2005."

That is what I was referring to.
 
Big deal. Crap is crap, no matter how it's packaged. Just look at this lovely line.

In a press release, Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo said that by utilizing the X-Fi's 24-bit Crystalizer and CMSS 3D technology, music from your MP3s and CDs can sound "even better than the original studio recording."

Yes, and pigs fly out of Sim Wong Hoo's ass.
 
John Reynolds said:
There's just something inside that makes me reluctant to buy a product marketed on the gaming handle of a guy named Wendel.

Heh, no argument there. But hey, it is a pretty big discount for those already insterested in the card. I voted for a PPU btw; there's no way you're going to catch me drop more than 100 euros for a sound card. I don't care if it can give you an orgasm listening through one.
 
DSC said:
Big deal. Crap is crap, no matter how it's packaged. Just look at this lovely line.



Yes, and pigs fly out of Sim Wong Hoo's ass.

It's always great to see people comment, and make an opinion about something they haven't even heard first hand. We are already aware of it's need to resample (as you have mentioned 20 times before). If you have something new to contribute to the thread, please post it.
 
DSC said:
Big deal. Crap is crap, no matter how it's packaged.
Still on your creative-hate roll I see. Frankly, I don't think many here at B3D are interested in listening to you spewing bile. Generally speaking, we try to keep a higher level of discourse on this site(*).

So why don't you make like a tree, and take your hate with you.





*=RSEC not included. :devilish:
 
74355450190329776qv.jpg


Notice the little 4 pronged connector on the back - does that look like a floppy power connector to anyone? If so, are they using it because they need it, or are just looking for a "cleaner" power source than the PCI bus.

I've not read up on all of this yet, but the questions I would have are: does it havea PCI Express version and can it doe Dolby Encode?
 
Dave Baumann said:
I've not read up on all of this yet, but the questions I would have are: does it havea PCI Express version and can it doe Dolby Encode?

Yeah, they haven't mentioned anything about encoding (which doesn't bode well IMO). I was also under the impression that one of the reasons this product was slow in coming was because it was better suited towards PCIe and it was designed for such. I am more inclined to wait on this product to see how it pans out in the long run.

Rur0ni said:
Does the pro/elite model come with an amp or something?

AFAIK it does not. You get a really kewl I/O bay & remote though (& all for the paltry sum of $400)! ;)
 
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Hrm...

Beyer DT 770 Pro

Was going to get a pair of these, as I hear they have the necessary bass, but I hear they are power hungry. And I'm fairly clueless when it comes to PC Audio(amplication, power and connector stuffs).

Am I going to have to get an amp for these if I get an X-Fi? :|
 
I'm pretty sure it has a headphone amp, but many times those aren't up to the task especially with some of the more esoteric headphone designs. It's pretty easy to get carried away in this realm. You may want to check out this site as well: http://www.headphone.com/

I didn't see anything on the specs page in regards to headphone amp specs, so who knows....
 
Hrm, I see what I can do if the X-Fi solution fails to give me enough power, I just rather that it will though. :-|
 
Monty said:
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
I didn't realize Creative's sloth is now a feature. :LOL: I'm not sure I'd qualify that longevity as either valuable or desirable, from a gamer's POV. Obviously I think the price is bollocks, but I didn't realize the Fatal1ty edition came with a front port and remote. That makes it look a bit more palatable at $200 when compared to similarly-kitted Audigy 2s, but still ridiculous at $280, IMO. An Audigy 2 nets you what, maybe 10-15% over CPU sound in current games? So the X-Fi can give me 40% better than 10%?

Me, I'd rather put the money toward a dual-core CPU and an unaccelerated sound card with higher-quality audio components. But then, I don't use my PC as a hi-fi (not with these $50 Logitechs and freebie earbuds).

Hopefully the budget X-Fi editions, sans remote and front panel, will show at more reasonable prices (compare to $130 retail for the new Aud 2 Gamers Edition, with Halo, Far Cry, Thief 3, SC:CT, and CoD, or $70AR for the old Gamers Edition bundle at NewEgg).
 
Why, if you take a CD and add some nice reverb and fiddle around with the eq, it's fairly easy to make it sound better than the original. I don't see a problem there, they'll be doing some post-processing which makes some titles sound "better". Not a big deal and definitely possible.
 
Rur0ni said:
Am I going to have to get an amp for these if I get an X-Fi? :|


Who told you such nonsense? You don't need an amp.

BD phones produce a rather natural sound, which won't give you the artificial booming bass some people like. Try before buying.

If you're looking for high-quality phones for half the price of that one above, try Sennheiser.
 
If this thing can give me better framerates i could see dropping 200$ . Not 400$ though. Hopefully they do something .

Mabye since they are selling to 3rd parties someone will make a gamers card with like 32-128megs for 200 or less . Then i would buy one
 
_xxx_ said:
Who told you such nonsense? You don't need an amp.

*Points to Head-Fi.org*

They all talk crazy talk when it comes to audio, at a level further than I wish to venture. :)

I just read reviews and the general consensus that these particular BD have some nice bass + soundstage stuffs. And they look comfy.
 
Of course you can use an additional amp, but you don't need one. That's just a stupid "audiophile"-talk thingy. They want everything to sound better than whatever and nothing is ever good enough, so... ;)
 
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