X-fi sound card for me?

[Smokey21]

hey guys. As you can see i have a pretty powerful system. My speakers are 5.1 Creative 5300's, and iam still using an old Audigy 1.

Iam thinking of upgrading the sound card, to one of the Xi-fi sound cards. Im not totally sure on the box thing on the more expensive version. I see they have a headphone jack, which id find very useful, and i really want a remote control as well.

I use my PC for gaming, i listen to a lot of music, and i watch a fair few DvD's as well. Now i know PcGamer know **** all about hardware, but they say the X-fi card, is really good, as offers a big difference for the things i mentioned.

Looking it seems i need to be looking at the X-Fi Platinum, with the box. I take it it fits into a 5.25 inch bay?

What do you guys think?

[shaithis]

I upgraded from a Audigy 2ZS to an XFI Fatality (pretty much the same as the Platinum).

yes, it requires a 5.25" bay and it runs a 40 pin ribbon cable to it (need to round it really if you have a windowed case).

As for the sound, I did notice a difference but wether it was subjective or not, I don't know.....its very difficult (costly and time consuming) to setup a proper A/B sound test for soundcards.

Overall I am very happy with the XFi.

[Lee H]

I jumped from Audigy 2 to X-Fi and notice a huge difference when playing mp3's using the 24-bit crystalisation and surround

[RavenNight]

Yep I went from onboard sound to an X-Fi Xtreme Music (the cheapo one!) and noticed a massive difference, especially in games, the position of stuff is much easier to determine and every thing sounds clearer.

[Hans Voralberg]

The X-fi Xtreme Music is very good IMO for value But if you insist on the box, i guess you can justify the Platinum cost

[Smokey21]

Scan do the Plat for 117, so it doesn't seem to shabby. Like i said, the remote would be useful, and id use me headphones more.

Im definatly gonna grab one. The other thing about my Audigy, is the software is crap, and it's OEM. I think it will be a decent increase seeing as ive got an original audigy and all the new software looks pretty decent.

The extra cost from Music one to the Plat is not an issue, as ill be keeing it for a long time, hell ive had my Audigy since they came out.

[shaithis]

If your a gamer (I hope so with that rig! ), then strestching to the 64MB version seems the obvious choice.

[herulach]

If you do, you might wanna check out this link:
http://uk.europe.creative.com/t/tran...n=8&lang=1&t=1

I dont know what creatives online prices are like compared to everywhere else, but 50% off the decoder is like a 50 quid saving if you want one.

[TooNice]

Umm.. my only hesitation was between the Xtreme Music and the Elite Pro. I settled for the later.

I don't care about the 64MB X-RAM, nor do I care much about the front bay, especially once I found out it needed a ribbon cable (messy). And I may want to use my last 5.25" bay for something else anyway.

Why even look at the Elite Pro? Well, after reading A LOT, I found out that the Elite Pro has better DAC and Op-amp to the rest. Which mean better sound for speakers/headphone than the rest. I do all my home music listenning through my PC, so I decided to stretch my budget "a bit" (3x) higher. Hopefully it'll last a good 2 years or so

I could've bought an Xtreme Music and get an external DAC, but it would've been even more expensive than the cost of the Elite Pro, and would only benefit headphones (which admitedly is where I do most of my music listenning - but I didn't want to ignore my Gigaworks ).

[Smokey21]

Does anyone know anywhere cheaper than Scan? Also i thought scan did free shipping?

[TooNice]

Interestingly enough, there is very little variations between the various places (including asia). Scan is one of the cheapest once you take into account free shipping. xtsit.com is also very competitive (cheaper than Scan, but more or less the same once you add shipping cost).

The best bang for buck however would be to get an OEM version on Ebay. They are the same as the Xtreme Music version, without the gold plated connectors (doesn't matter much really). I've seen them for as low as £50 inc. shipping.

[Smokey21]

The shipping isn't free.

I add the card to my basket, go checkout, etc, and it says 117. 7quid for postage!

[dureth]

You have to register your scan account with your hexus account before you get free postage.

Take a look at this thread on the matter: http://forums.hexus.net/announcement...nouncementid=9

[theuncharmed]

Have to register your Hexus account to get free delivery. for some reason I cant find the link, but its on the forums somewhere. Once you register your account with Scan, login, order something and hey presto delivery is free

I've bought loads more stuff from Scan since the delivery is free - excellent marketing idea imo

[Smokey21]

Cheers for link ,done.

[TooNice]

Bleh, I see that the price of the Elite Pro just dropped. Only a few days after I received mine :/