Most Popular Creative Sound Blaster X Fi XtremeGamer Sound Card 70SB073A00000
Band : Creative Labs
Model : 70SB073A00000
Product Features :
- Device Type Sound card
- Interface Type PCI
- Localization English
- Sound Output Mode 7 1
>> Excellent product
Considering the price I paid this was an excellent buy I ve seen it on the Web for a much higher price The sound is outstanding and installation was simple Would consider this a really great purchase
>> Not the performance booster I was hoping for
Please keep in mind before reading this that I am NOT an audiophile
Now the primary reasons I bought this card were that it was on sale here for sixty five dollars and because I read everywhere that it boosts performance by removing the audio processing load from the cpu I currently run a Phenom II X4 945 and a Radeon HD 5770 which isn t amazing in the world of i7 setups but I still might not be seeing as big of an improvement as some entry level systems would In any case after properly configuring the card it boosted my framerate by about 5 10fps depending on the game Some games I was lucky to get one or two frame improvements out of It sounds good and is a definite improvement over my onboard audio but I still don t think it s worth the full one hundred dollar price tag
I also think it s worth mentioning that mine never came with the Vista install cd Only XP and a demo disk I didn t really care because I run Windows 7 and I ve read other reviews talking about compatibility issues with 7 and the Vista drivers anyway and it was no big deal to head over to creatives site and spend about ten min downloading everything I needed On that note the software interface looks cool but is in need of some simplification and could be very confusing to some
>> Good Card but not all that
I ve been using creative sound cards for about 10 years now They have been excellent sounding and feature packed My first was a Sound blaster live gamer 5 1 in 2000 and it is still working well in the computer I let the kids use My next creative product was and is the Inspire 5300 5 1 speaker system The sound was and is great Then Came time for me to upgrade my computer so I went with a top of the line 1st gen Sli rig Being a gamer The onboard soundblaster chipset sounded great but I knew from an FPS point of view I needed a dedicated sound card so I went with what I knew and selected the Audigy ZS 2 Platinum The sound blew me away for gaming and the greater dynamic range for music made this sound card worth every penny Then came time to upgrade again thanks to a power supply going up in smoke and taking most of my computer componets with it Managed to salvaged one vid card which I gave to a friend and my beloved Creative ZS2 or so I thought So I built my new quad core rig went crossfire this time with the MOBO instead of Sli The MOBO came with onboard RealT3c which was disabled in BIOS from the get go because i was installing my Audigy sound card Well plugged it in and installed my OS and all my software and was back up and running right away I noticed some OS instability I mucked about in the OS trying to find the answer for days Then It dawned on me to try one thing I went into BIOS enabled onboard sound and removed my Audigy and had no problems with my OS after I Guess My old sound card bit it too when my PSU went in my old rig So I needed a new sound card as the onboard just wasn t up to the standards of sound quality I had become use to so I got this sound card I then uninstalled all the drivers and software for the Realpiece then turned off onboard in BIOS powered down unplugged my computer and plugged in my new XFI gamer Everything installed without a hitch as far as making everything sound so much better To me it sounds the same great If you are looking for a new sound card and have purchased and used Creative products in the past this sound card will not disappoint
