X-Fi Pricing

[Matt2]

It's companies like Creative that make me happy that I am not an audiophile.

My onboard sound + 5.1 surround is plenty for me.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Venomous
Creative's pricing is going to fall like a rock during Xmas.. More hype, more bull. HDA Mystique all the way. $300 for a soundcard? Goodluck trying to justify that purchase.

Us old timers spent that much on a Sound Blaster Pro when they first came out 15 years or so ago. So considering how much more advanced this card is to the original SB Pro I think it is priced right.

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: Venomous
Creative's pricing is going to fall like a rock during Xmas.. More hype, more bull. HDA Mystique all the way. $300 for a soundcard? Goodluck trying to justify that purchase.

Us old timers spent that much on a Sound Blaster Pro when they first came out 15 years or so ago. So considering how much more advanced this card is to the original SB Pro I think it is priced right.

Yeah, but the SB Pro revolutionized PC sound. X-Fi doesn't seem nearly that revolutionary.

If you hadn't bought that $300 SB Pro, what would your Comp sound like? What would games have sounded like? Would games have even played with sound?

That is not the case here. Onboard sound, and pretty much every other sound card out there will do the same job.

 

[everman]

I can't believe people will pay over $100 for a sound card. Creative is just adding useless junk to justify outrageous prices.
Some of the best cards out there are well under $100, and integrated audio is just fine in many cases.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: DarkKnight69

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: mwmorph

Originally posted by: Excelsior

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo

Originally posted by: Hacp

I will repeat again nothing i mean nothing like integrated or audigyz cant compare to the new sound care trust me i was there

I said that I'll stick with my onboard sound... You then said that the onboard sound will take up CPU usage, and that a true gamer won't let those frames go to waste... I then responded that My onboard sound takes MINIMal CPU usage...

to be fair the new x-fi has nice near features you can't get on onboard audio. the headphone surround fx look interesting, and so does the sound quality enhancement for audio from cds and such.

I still say it looks like a bunch of marketing BS and hype.

I am interested ni 5.1 for normal headphines, but it's not crucial. there are surround headphines with 4 or 6 drivers that do that already.

the crystillazier is for compressed files not uncompressed like cds, inrease fro cd soundquality wont be too bug and it's iffy for compressed audio too(mp3s. oggs,wma) since it is guessing at waht is missing and has the capibility ot really destroy the sound quality.

as for fps, onboard uses about 5% cpu. That fps hit could easily be made up by not using $279 on a xfi fatal1ty and upgtrading from a crappy 6600gt to a freaking 7800gt(around 2x faster than a 6600gt in sli). FPs is not a valid argument.

Uh..there is no reason to be interested in 5.1 for regular headphones..IMO anyway. Yeah, and the headphones with 4-6 drivers tend to suck compared to decent quality traditional headphones.

And agreed, FPS is definitely not a valid argument.

I have a set of Zalman 5.1 theater headphone and they rock the pants off any headphone I have owned before. They have incredible precision and sound...

Uh..and exactly what headphones had you used before? Sh!tty earbuds/small supra-aural headphones that come with cd players?

 

[Chocolate Pi]

Pardon my ignorance, but what allows one sound card to cost different from another? In fact, how on earth are these 4 sound cards different at all? All I can find is a marketing line about what customers they are targeting...

I know graphics cards backwards and forwards, from pipelines affectings yields to clock speeds and memory costs; all fators affecting price and preformance. It is clear how graphics cards can differ in performance and retail cost. But what about sound cards?

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: Chocolate Pi
I know graphics cards backwards and forwards, from pipelines affectings yields to clock speeds and memory costs; all fators affecting price and preformance. It is clear how graphics cards can differ in performance and retail cost. But what about sound cards?

Essentially all four of the XFi cards are the same, but there are some differences. They have some different DACs onboard to be better targeted for their various application. The Elite uses the 'audiophile' type DACs and the least expensive version uses the least expensive DACs.

They include varying degrees of external devices (remote control, external audio interface panels) to justify some of the increased price, and the 2 highest end of the line add some memory on-board for developers to play with.

The primary chip though is the same. And software/drivers probably has some features disabled for the cheaper cards.

All in all though, I'm willing to bet that profit margins increase significantly as you move up in the line.

If you read the review of this thing at Tom's Hardware, you can practically hear the slurping as they get down on their knees in front of Creative. But I see nothing revolutionary. More processing power for 3D effects is the only new thing I see at all. Everything else is re-hash of existing technology.