Need some advice in upgrading soundcard

[ddogg]

hi guys, i currently have a Creative Live! 5.1 in one of my rigs. I was thinking of upgrading to the X-fi Xtrememusic. Will this be a huge step up in performance?
Any advice would be appreciated.
thanks

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

That will depend on some things like the quality of your source material, the quality of your speakers/headphones, etc.

For the fps improvement in games, the X-Fi doesn't seem to offer much if any improvement over the A2 lineup from Creative.

That said, it could be a good idea for you. When it was on sale for $75 AR, that was a good deal.

 

[ddogg]

its connected to a logitech Z5500. This rig is used by my bro, hes not much into gaming, he listens to a lot of music though.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

It might be worth it then. I'd say wait until it goes on sale again if possible.

 

[iv4n]

I'd seriously recommend the x-fi series of sound cards. After going around for advice and all that, the sound quality is really good due to the 24-bit crystalliser. But the xtreme music is supposedly only entry-level for the x-fi series. If you game, the x-fi fata1ity would be great coz it has 64MB of x-ram that creative says supposedly allows for a 40% increase in performance (though I tink its kinda exaggerated). The CMSS-3D headphone expander tech that the x-fi cards have also make headphone gaming really great

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

The 24-bit crystallizer also introduces distortion and artificially bumps up treble and bass while reducing midrange. It also increases volume slightly... these things are going to result in more people saying it sounds better.

If you have a decent set of speakers, it's not really desirable to have it artificially boost certain frequency ranges in all cases, and especially in some cases where increasing bass and treble makes things sound much worse.

You can turn the crystallizer off though and get really clean music playback

I haven't seen any benchmarks showing any kind of significant benefit from x-ram, and certainly nothing to warrant the huge price that comes with it.

The headphone aspect really seems like a good feature on it though.

 

[igowerf]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I haven't seen any benchmarks showing any kind of significant benefit from x-ram, and certainly nothing to warrant the huge price that comes with it.

Have you seen any reviews that directly compare the cards with X-RAM and the cards without?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: igowerf

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I haven't seen any benchmarks showing any kind of significant benefit from x-ram, and certainly nothing to warrant the huge price that comes with it.

Have you seen any reviews that directly compare the cards with X-RAM and the cards without?

Here's one
http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2518&p=10

You can look for more if you want

 

[igowerf]

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

Originally posted by: igowerf

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I haven't seen any benchmarks showing any kind of significant benefit from x-ram, and certainly nothing to warrant the huge price that comes with it.

Have you seen any reviews that directly compare the cards with X-RAM and the cards without?

Here's one
http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2518&p=10

You can look for more if you want

Well, I meant a comparison among the X-Fi cards. The XtremeMusic doesn't have onboard RAM while the uber-fatality-whatever version does. It doesn't seem to be that much better than an Audigy 4 though.

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: igowerf

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello

Originally posted by: igowerf

Originally posted by: YOyoYOhowsDAjello
I haven't seen any benchmarks showing any kind of significant benefit from x-ram, and certainly nothing to warrant the huge price that comes with it.

Have you seen any reviews that directly compare the cards with X-RAM and the cards without?

Here's one
http://www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2518&p=10

You can look for more if you want

Well, I meant a comparison among the X-Fi cards. The XtremeMusic doesn't have onboard RAM while the uber-fatality-whatever version does. It doesn't seem to be that much better than an Audigy 4 though.

I was just showing that a creative card without X-RAM (the 4pro) vs a card with X-RAM (the X-Fi elite pro) didn't have much of a difference at all, certainly not worth the price increase over the basic card.