Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro

[kalniel]

Hardly - they've never had so much effective competition as now and I think their market share reflects that.

They've recently been concentrating more on things like headsets with microphones, mp3 players and so on.

[Neo_VR]

Hardly - they've never had so much effective competition as now and I think their market share reflects that.

They've recently been concentrating more on things like headsets with microphones, mp3 players and so on.

Also with the arrival of Vista, and the "contraversial" removal of Hardware accellerated audio aka EAX, it levels the playingfield somewhat, as previously on winXP the X-FI used EAX5, whilst all other solutions could only emulate EAX2. So now the only difference really is the sound quality and the companies drivers.. and Creative have been very lax in that department, the fact they only support the X-fi in Vista and all the other drivers are still "beta" over a year later doesnt inspire confidence.
I still own and use an original Audigy card on Vista, although its only recently i started using it again when i found some homebrew drivers for it. it sounds marginally better than the cheap (non-HD) onboard solution on my mobo, but theres no noticeable difference with 3d audio in games.