Advantages: Crystal clear sound with a comprehensive software package
Disadvantages: Features can be a bit daunting for the novice

...in and drivers installed, I also managed to increase my 3Dmark2003 scores by over 1000, showing that it does release a large amount of system resources for other devices. Software as usual with creative packages will leave you wanting for nothing. The entertainment centre allows fine tuning sound for music/DVD or games independantly. Creative mediasource player is the best player/MP3 decoder I've used, and with the ability to plug in any musical instrument (I've plugged in my base and had a play with the recorder and audio creation packages), and tweak till you're hearts content. Short of full on proffesional suite from the likes of Yamaha, or spending another £150 on the X-Fi platinum, you won't get a better package... Read review

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Advantages: Awesome Sound Quality, Easy to install, Drivers easy to get, good support
Disadvantages: Clicks in Entertainment Mode

...I managed to pick up an OEM Version of the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music from eBay for around £30 around 3 months ago. It is very easy to install, simply slot it into an empty slot and install the drivers and software. Wow! What a difference! I upgraded from onboard sound and the quality difference is unbelievable. I have the card paired with Logitech z-640 5.1 Surround Sound Speakers and a Medusa Speedlink 5.1 Surround headset. Not only does the card come packed with features for example the 24-bit crystaliser, but it is easy to use and configure with the Creative Audio Console. The card make sounds in games beautiful and music is perfect. However. I had a lot of teething problem with the card. At first, whenever I reset my PC, the card settings were defaulted to headphones, when my speakers were plugged in, muting... Read review

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Advantages: Amazing sound quality, great for gaming, looks cool, less lag/stuttering in games, transforms music
Disadvantages: Still driver issues and some problems in games, price may still be too steep for some

...your audio devices to the back of it. The only problems with 'installation' you might have is some of the drivers are fairly unstable, so get the newest ones out direct from Creative to be sure you experiance as little of this as possible. I have been using P5800's and a Plantronics Gamecom1 headset and both had the sound sound increased greatly on products that were already of high standard (search them for reviews). All in all its the perfect soundcard for anyone other then extreme autophiles, once the driver issues are sorted out there is nothing to worry about at all, you can even grab it at a decent price now aswell. I woudent say quite exellent value for money, because for some people its still way too much to spend on a soundcard, and there are very good options for cheaper.. the older audigy and soundblaster ranges are both great... Read review

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Advantages: High quality sound, excellent features set
Disadvantages: Driver software on CD differs from the Auto-update

...I bought the Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music to complement my Grado SR325 + Creek OBH-1 Headphone Amplifier system, so I could enjoy the music at the best possible quality without having to endure the on-board sound card (although the nForce 680i HD Azalia sound + Realtek chip are fairly good themselves). The card came with the standard installation CD and the card, installation is easy and there are a whole lot of connecting options, if you want to upgrade to 7.1 at some stage (haven't got the floor space at the moment). Installation is easy and although Creative drivers on Windows Vista are still under development, I haven't been experiencing any problems under Windows XP. The chip on the X-fi is the same as the one used on the high-end models, with the lack of more memory (64 MB for the Fatl1ty version) and the front panel... Read review

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Advantages: Amazing sound, excellent upmixing
Disadvantages: Software can be a pain.

....1, stunning, somehow, the Creative X-Fi had pulled out every instrument and given them an appropriate speaker!? I don't know how it did it but it was pretty amazing, vocals in the centre, beats on all channels, other instruments on the left, background vocals on the rear speakers. Sensational. After this I turned on Creative's fabled 24 Bit crystalizer, theoretically this improves the 16Bit MP3 to a CD level 24Bit sound quality. Once again the quality of the track had been further improved. Everything sounded sharper, and in particular the bass had become more powerful (but not to powerful to my taste). The EAX effects we're nice to, but not very appropraite for rap metal. I always considered EAX a novelty, unless your listening to classic music you don't really want echos and things like that. SOFTWARE: The Creative software comes in lots... Read review

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Advantages: Great Dolby/DTS decoder, excellent sound quality and gaming audio
Disadvantages: expensive

...This is the X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS endorsed by professional gamer Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel. X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS also features a glowing Fatal1ty logo on the soundcard and drive bay(!!!!!!).Err, ok, moving on.... First up, whats included in the package. You get the card, a 5.25 inch drive bay with various audio inputs and outputs which I wil detail later, and a remote that can be used to make changes to volume and other functions, also mentioned later. The installation CD contains drivers and also the following: Doom3 EAX patch, Audio Console, Creative MediaSource & DVD-Audio Player, DTS Neo:6, Karaoke Player, Smart Recorder, SoundFont Bank Manager, THX Setup Console, Vienna SoundFont Studio, Console Launcher, Volume Panel, WaveStudio, Creative Media Toolbox, Creative Diagnostics. Drivers and software can be autoupdated via the creative... Read review

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Advantages: its just so damn good.
Disadvantages: pricey for a sound card

...Ive been building my own PCs for a number of years and been using them since the early 90s. In all this time ive not really bothered too much with sound cards, more the usually CPU, GFX etc. But this card is a breakthrough for me, its excellent. My previous card was a creative also, a basic soundblaster live card, the x-fi improves the quality of sound sooo much. Ive used it with online gaming, mp3s & dvds and have noticed a vast improvement in all areas. The main use for me is with online gaming. The biggest issue with these games is squeezing frames per second -FPS - out of the machine. Remarkably this sound card gave me an instant boost of about 20fps, which was about 30% for me. The immersion factor also increased. I dont know if the competitors can do this, but any card that can give me surround sound from a basic 2.1 speaker... Read review

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Advantages: CHEAP, supports four speakers.
Disadvantages: 3d audio could be slightly better

...Sound blaster Live! has the last year bean the only goog sound card for me, most importatntly it is cheap, it is high quality and comes with the option of connecting two sets of speakers to it. I purchased this card because it was cheap, and because it lowed me to use two applications using sound at the same time (playing games, listening to music etc.) Later i discoverd enviromenral audio wich greatly enhances the sound quality and makes the gaming feeling even more realistic, but not perfect. Quite frankly I think Creative (www.creative.com) have made an excellent sound card for semi professional use, If one is willing to pay more you can also buy the platinum version with a mixr box in one of your 5,25" bays.... Read review

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Advantages: Extra bundled software utils
Disadvantages: none

...Yet another great product from a well known company. Creative labs have been around now for years and always seem to top the market with well priced software and hardware that you can trust. Not only do they supply everything in the software bundles but they offer full support via their web site with tons of downloads and upgrades and with one on one tech help if required. When I bought my sound blaster PCI64 it was quite a recent product and much sought after by those who love quality music and good sound reproduction. It came complete with a CD that contained drivers for just about every model of computer operating system and loads of extra utility stuff like Creative Audio software, Wave Lab, Creative CD, sound lab for microphone use and more. The wave lab is about the most popular one for me as I often like to make my own mp3s... Read review

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Advantages: Under XP this is a great souncard for games and musicians.
Disadvantages: Under Vista there have been issues.

...change to Vista, the simple answer is this: use the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatality FPS. It works perfectly just so long as you stay with the OS it was designed for. That's Windows XP. Conclusions: Because this sound card is clearly a mismatch for Vista and has forced me to put my credit card away and not buy it, I can hardly recommend it to anyone else. It may be that the long-standing driver issues from Creative will lead to this card behaving properly after all this time. So far, on a machine where the music side is 'mission critical', I can't afford to let anyone down and ruin their recording with audio errors, and haven't dared upgrade to the new OS. I did consider trying Linux but Creative have no drivers for this card that will work with Linux either. Perhaps that's quite telling. When I chose the Fatality sound card I thought... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful