Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty Sound Card $199

[jbkane26]

Here

anybody going to buy one?, i might get the cheapest one when available

link goes dead and back working again, don't know why, but it officially ends August 14

 

[Corporate Thug]

est ship time 8-10 weeks

 

[bob4432]

no, personally i think all of the fatal1ty stuff is just overpriced regular items that might have a different color pcb or some weird/different hsf combos. total joke.

 

[imported_malcontent]

I suspect that a lot of people will be buying these, at it is being used in the Maximum PC '05 Dream Machine.

 

[amdmaxx]

Its not worth the price.. U can get HD sound from motherboards these days..

 

[Wag]

It is an unknown quantity.

Considering the Audigy1 supports all the advanced EAX4 stuff anyways, I wonder just how much better the X-Fi cards wil be.

 

[ChaoZ]

Hope they lower the prices of Audidy 2s because of this.

 

[jdogg707]

Hell, just pre-ordered, by the time it actually ships, I'll have the time to A. Read reviews and see if the card is worth it and B. Save the money to pay for it. If the card is as good as I hope it will be, then great, I'll have gotten a decent price on a good card, epscially after I sell my Audigy 2 ZS. If the card turns out to be a POS, I'll cancel my order and forget about it!

I believe the one thing that could be the most interesting about this card is the onboard 64MB of RAM. My Z-5500's would love to get a hold of some uncompressed audio samples in 5.1 surround while playing Battlefield 2....or any other game that takes advantage of the onboard memory.

 

[gi0rgi0]

Just bought an audigy 2 value. But then again this will take 8 weeks at least to ship, hehe. I might put in an order though.
They usually charge your card when it ships right ?

 

[dchilder]

I'm interested in the performance of this at least. "24x" the power of an Audigy sounds impressive, but what does that really mean if games sound OK now? I read a brief review that sounded promising either here or Tom's Hardware, and the RAM on this one sounds like it could come in handy, but I imagine it will be a year or two before we could expect to see any games really use the added processing power.

 

[jdogg707]

Originally posted by: gi0rgi0
Just bought an audigy 2 value. But then again this will take 8 weeks at least to ship, hehe. I might put in an order though.
They usually charge your card when it ships right ?

From my order confirmation E-Mail:

"Your credit card will not be charged until we are ready to ship your preorder."

 

[jpeyton]

Do you guys have a proper set of speakers to take advantage of this card? And proper games as well?

Would be interesting to see a blind listening test between this card and a Audigy2 ZS using a variety of material and headphones/speakers.

 

[jdogg707]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Do you guys have a proper set of speakers to take advantage of this card? And proper games as well?

Would be interesting to see a blind listening test between this card and a Audigy2 ZS using a variety of material and headphones/speakers.

I have a set of Logitech Z-5500's and a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones. I'll give it a listen once I get it and see whether I can notice a difference. I've got a spare linux box that I can pop Windows on long enough to install a sound card.

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: amdmaxx
Its not worth the price.. U can get HD sound from motherboards these days..

If you think that is anywhere close to what a good soundcard can do, I have a bridge to sell you.

The verdict is still coming on this creative card/chip. If the past is any indication, it will be the gaming standard, but just OK for movie and music fare. Having 50 million transistors does not automatically transmit into being better sound quality.

It's nice that other companies are starting to finally return to trying to fight creative's near monopoly in the sound card market. See the Via envy chip, the latest dolby digital live chipset from another company (cmedia?), and the like. It's unfortunate that Creative sued Aureal out of existence, as A3D was and remains the pinacle of 3D sound.

 

[gi0rgi0]

Onboard sound sucks. Exception would be the soundstorm on the nf7-s. But other than that theres no comparison.

 

[intogamer]

meh still good with SB LIVE

speakers=200
sound card=200

too expensive

 

[eLiu]

Originally posted by: Wag
It is an unknown quantity.

Considering the Audigy1 supports all the advanced EAX4 stuff anyways, I wonder just how much better the X-Fi cards wil be.

they will prolly sound better...my sennheisers sound better on an audigy2 than an audigy1 imo

maybe im imagining things...but there's a difference to me

 

[cheapherk]

THANKS FOR THE LINK! I've been looking everywhere for somewhere to preorder this. I couldn't find it on Creatives site. You just saved me $80- THANKS!!!!!

 

[sapiens74]

It's a big deal for me cause what they said about headphones. I use those mostly.

Ordered mine yesterday

 

[Skiguy411]

I'm wondering what the actual price for the OEM version will be for this when it comes out at say newegg or zipzoomfly. Any ideas?

 

[ourfpshero]

if you are a gamer- u will definately need one of these cards. i will probably wait fot a cheaper oem version- but i WILL have one

 

[darkswordsman17]

Originally posted by: Skiguy411
I'm wondering what the actual price for the OEM version will be for this when it comes out at say newegg or zipzoomfly. Any ideas?

I'm kinda curious about that as well. I don't doubt it'll sell at or maybe even above MSRP for a while (like all the high end gaming hardware does these days it seems) and then hopefully drop not too long after. I think the retail one will probably settle about $250 or so.

 

[Grandmoph]

Link appears to be dead now

 

[Skiguy411]

OMGWTF. Its dead? NO!!!!!

Edit: Well I got it by going to archive.org and entering the website address on it and then clicking their link. It worked, so I went ahead and preorded it.

Edit 2: Link seems to be back up

 

[cheapherk]

Originally posted by: jpeyton
Do you guys have a proper set of speakers to take advantage of this card? And proper games as well?

Yes, Logitech® Z-5500 Digital 5.1. As far as games, Battlefield 2 is the only thing out at the moment that has settings specifically for the X-FI and, yes, I have it.