Creative to enter Graphics industry

[Mem]

<< don't get it... if CL owns the audio market, how come everyone and their mom recommends a Santa Cruz? >>




I`ve been using Creative sound cards since 1994,and still have a SB Live and Audigy in two VIA boards,to be honest I`ve never had any problems with their drivers and all my games have and are working fine,I cannot speak for other people but IMHO their drivers are not as bad as some people say,the only real problem I can see with their drivers is lack of frequent updates,I guess it`s just as well I`ve had no driver problems.

Getting back on topic do I think they will be a real graphics force? To be honest no,but I wouldn`t be surprised if they find a good spot say in the budget area rather then going toe to toe with the big players like Nvidia,ATi for the top spot,anyway it`s too early yet so we will have to wait and see what happens.

 

[tokamak]

I'm sure nVidia and ATI are taking this very seriously, as well they should. Techies like us may stay away from Creative's product, sure, but I think it's safe to say that we do NOT constitute a majority of video card buyers. Creative DOES have a ton of brand name recognition going all the way back to SB16 days. That is something that takes a very long time to build and something that I don't believe erodes as quickly as we may think. I also think it is something that nVidia and ATI haven't quite achieved yet, especially nVidia since they don't make their own cards. I sincerely believe that if Creative markets well, puts their name all over the box, and passes their card off as fast (whether it is or not), Joe Average Consumer will buy them like hot cakes at Fry's.

 

[EMAN]

Trivial? It isn't trivial to those who had it. Try playing a game with what sounds like Rice Krispies in the background. Speakers or intereference? So on a VIA board it's their fault but on an Intel board it's bad speakers? I'm sorry, but if 3 years of people having these problems didn't discover that solution I'm going to going to go out on a limb and say that wasn't the issue. And not all 686B boards had problems either.

Yes trivial, it's really the person who installed the sound card is at fault. If he doesn't know how to troubleshoot than he or she shouldn't be installing devices in their systems. They should really get a professional system builder to have a look at it otherwise it's not a known fact that the chipsets you mentioned has problems with them. I'm sure dell uses those chipset with their sound blaster cards and don't have popping sounds. I never had problems with sound blaster cards except with VIA motherboards and now it's fine after VIA updated their drivers.

To everybody. When did I say Creative will dominate. I'm just saying Nvidia and ATI should watch out for Creative because they have market power, money, and own 3dlabs.


from your first post, i got the feeling you ("Very nice article about creative labs and the graphics industry and their acquisition on 3dlabs and how they will dominate because of their market power.") thought creative would kick everyone's ass in the graphics market, because they practically own the soundcard market. i'm saying one has nothing to do with the other. but if their driver track record is any indication of the future, creative is gonna be in for a rough ride.

Your just putting words in my mouth. When did I say they would kick everyone's ass. That is your assumption of what I thought.

Just because they have lack of driver updates on their sound card doesn't necessarily mean they will have $hitty drivers for their graphics cards. Everybody knows that video card should have good drivers and Creative Labs knows this. Who doesn't?

 

[spanky]

<< Your just putting words in my mouth. When did I say they would kick everyone's ass. That is your assumption of what I thought >>



well, when u said it was a nice article, i thought u agreed with "how they will dominate because of their market power". i'm not putting words in ur mouth... i'm just repeating what u said. at any rate, barking back and forth won't settle much. we'll just have to wait and see if creative can pull this off. one thing's for sure tho, i won't be a guinea pig.

 

[EMAN]

well, when u said it was a nice article, i thought u agreed with "how they will dominate because of their market power". i'm not putting words in ur mouth... i'm just repeating what u said.

Did you even read the article? Why don't you read the article and tell me your thoughts instead of just disagreeing with me.

 

[spanky]

if i was to disagree with u, i would have said it was a crappy article. i do not subscribe to that magazine, but if u could/would post a link (if possible) to the article, i would read it.

 

[gsaldivar]

"...it's really the person who installed the sound card is at fault. If he doesn't know how to troubleshoot than he or she shouldn't be installing devices in their systems. They should really get a professional system builder to have a look at it..."

omg. Please pull your head out......

 

[EMAN]

omg. Please pull your head out......

Actually my head is in your mouth. Thanks for swallowing.

 

[gsaldivar]

Go back to reading Maximum PC, son. The internet is not for u....

 

[BFG10K]

Yes trivial, it's really the person who installed the sound card is at fault.

Statements like this really do nothing other than erode what little credibility your arguments may have had.

If he doesn't know how to troubleshoot than he or she shouldn't be installing devices in their systems.

True enough but are you implying that everyone who has crackling problems is an idiot? If you are, you're completely wrong. There are documented problems that exist with the Live! cards/drivers and are entirely Creative's fault. You can blame VIA all you like but often they're only partially to blame.

I'm sure dell uses those chipset with their sound blaster cards and don't have popping sounds.

Even Intel chipsets have reported crackling/popping problems with Live! cards. Now if I were a gambling person I'd put my money on the problem being with the Live!, not with the best chipset maker in the industry.

I never had problems with sound blaster cards except with VIA motherboards and now it's fine after VIA updated their drivers.

That's because VIA incorporates specific fixes for the problems that the Live! causes while fixing their own chipset hardware problems at the same time.

 

[EMAN]

Go back to reading Maximum PC, son. The internet is not for u....

Go back to swallowing my head. Anandtech is not for you.




Statements like this really do nothing other than erode what little credibility your arguments may have had.

What is wrong with the statement. I've had problems with the Live card making popping sounds before but rarely happens. Guess what I did. I tried diff. set of speakers and moved it to diff. PCI slots and you know what. NO MORE POPPING SOUNDS.


True enough but are you implying that everyone who has crackling problems is an idiot? If you are, you're completely wrong. There are documented problems that exist with the Live! cards/drivers and are entirely Creative's fault. You can blame VIA all you like but often they're only partially to blame.

Did I say everybody? Maybe some of those people who had problems were there fault or just the bad board or just didn't troubleshoot it right. It can be lots of things but I doubt all the problems were Creative's fault.

 

[jaeger66]

<<
What is wrong with the statement. I've had problems with the Live card making popping sounds before but rarely happens. Guess what I did. I tried diff. set of speakers and moved it to diff. PCI slots and you know what. NO MORE POPPING SOUNDS.
>>



And the thousands for whom this did NOT work are all fools? You're the only one who's figured it out?

 

[EMAN]

And the thousands for whom this did NOT work are all fools? You're the only one who's figured it out?

I guess they are fools then.

You have to rearrange the PCI cards you have, not just Sblive. Make sure your speaker wires are not getting interference.

Your telling me all the chipsets you've mentioned have popping sounds with the sblive. That is bull and why am I defending Creative anyways, that's their problem. Anyways back to the subject. Creative is going to have a chip by December. That's the rumor.

 

[Sunner]

I love it when people think just cause it works for them, it'll work for everyone else, and if it doesn't, it's everyone else's fault.

Brian Hook said something about that once, I believe it was something along the lines of 'Remember that you, your brother, and his roommate, are NOT "The Community"!'

 

[EMAN]

I love it when people think just cause it works for them, it'll work for everyone else, and if it doesn't, it's everyone else's fault.

I love it when people think it doesn't work for them, it won't work for everyone else, and if it doesn't it's the companies fault.

 

[gregor7777]

Perfect example of Creative's ineptness at driver writing is the DXR3 Decoder card. Now everyone knows this was basically a modified Hollywood+. Try Creative's drivers (at least earlier ones, I jumped on it quick at the time) and all sorts of f*cked up stuff was going on with my system.

I grabbed the hollywood+ drivers, and the thing worked fantastic. I didn't switch PCI slots, didn't have to do any registry hacking, nothing. It just worked great.

That being said, 3dlabs is known for stability in a professional market where it is required, so if Creative stays out of their way maybe we'll see something worthwhile.

BTW, when I said earlier that I didn't see a need for another player in the market, I just meant that there was no NEED for one in a healthy sub-$200 VC market and prices and product availability were pretty good ATM. I didn't mean that more competition wasn't a good thing though

 

[rbV5]

Is this an audio or video thread? LOL

 

[sandorski]

If CL just writes the 3Dlabs guys a blank cheque, then they have a chance. If the CL marketing or management team start meddling though(and they likely will), then 3DLabs will turn to crap.

Yes, Live problems happen on practically all chipsets, most people don't experience them though. Even most VIA chipset users don't have the problem, but the problem is a lot more common when paired with VIA chipsets.

[Conjecture] A recent chipset PCI throughput comparison showed how VIA's PCI data throughput was very low compared with most all other chipsets. Live's and Audigy's are known PCI bus hogs. Seems to indicate that VIA chipsets are more likely to run out of PCI Bandwidth, however, other chipsets can also run out of PCI Bandwidth in certain circumstances. Live and Audigy are at fault for crackling, no matter how you cut it. [/Conjecture]

Why didn't Aureal, Turtle Beach, and Hercules not have these problems? They didn't attempt to hog the PCI bus! These 3 companies have produced cards of equal to greater quality than their contemporary CL based cards and they did it with superior features at the same time! Let's look at A3D 2.0 for example: It is still the best 3d sound positioning ever put on a soundcard. As well as being superior, it was very cpu intensive which required the card to send a lot of data across the PCI bus. However, it never saturated the PCI bus! On the flipside, the Live's EAX had practically no cpu useage, yet it can regularly cause PCI saturation!! WTF is with that? Small soundchip(Aureal and CMedia) can avoid PCI bus problems, but the relatively huge CL can not?! :|

<edit: spelling error(s)>

 

[merlocka]

I love it when people think it doesn't work for them, it won't work for everyone else, and if it doesn't it's the companies fault.

That's called a compatibility issue. Like when you said you should try other speakers or moving PCI slots... hence the term compatible.

 

[EMAN]

That's called a compatibility issue. Like when you said you should try other speakers or moving PCI slots... hence the term compatible.

How is this compatibility issue? If you get interference from your speaker wires it?s Creative?s fault? Rearrange your PCI slots so you don?t have IRQ conflicts is compatibility issues? Yeah okay whatever you say.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

EMAN is so smart, I bet he has an A+ cert and everything.

 

[Compellor]

<< EMAN is so smart, I bet he has an A+ cert and everything. >>



Having an A+ certification doesn't mean $hit, nor does it make a person smarter with computers. You ever talk to some of these idiots in the local "mom and pop" computer store with A+ certification?

Back to the subject at hand... I think Creative can pull it off if they market the video card wisely and offer good tech/driver support for it. It may take them a few years to build up a reputation as a video chip maker, and they'll have to stay competitive with ATi and NVIDIA or they'll end up like 3Dfx. Then again, Diamond Multimedia made (crappy) video cards for years and entered into the sound card business with much success until Aureal went belly up.

 

[jaeger66]

<<

Having an A+ certification doesn't mean $hit, nor does it make a person smarter with computers. You ever talk to some of these idiots in the local "mom and pop" computer store with A+ certification?

>>


Ah, it was a JOKE.

 

[Leon]

<< nVidia's dominance in the video market didn't help them at all in the chipset market. >>



That's true, but their partnership with AMD did, as evidenced by two very high profile design wins with Compaq and HP recently. Design win with Compaq w/most popular AMD models (6000 and 8000) = $$$$.

3D Labs is pushing OpenGl 2.0 spec, so I would assume they will come up with programmable GPU soon.

 

[BFG10K]

What is wrong with the statement.

What's worng with it? Quite simply that everyone who has problems with the board isn't necessarily an idiot.

I've had problems with the Live card making popping sounds before but rarely happens. Guess what I did. I tried diff. set of speakers and moved it to diff. PCI slots and you know what. NO MORE POPPING SOUNDS.

And perhaps some of those people tried the same things as you and it didn't work for them. And perhaps they even tried things that you didn't and it still didn't work.

Did I say everybody?

Yes.

It can be lots of things but I doubt all the problems were Creative's fault.

I didn't say they were all Creative's fault.

But you said that they were all the users' fault.