VOGONS


First post, by Almoststew1990

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Hi everyone, my Audigy 2 ZS is being a bit temperamental in a variety of motherboards so I'm looking to replace it and take the opportunity to upgrade.

I see the next card along is the X-Fi and like pretty much all creative cards there are loads of different versions.

Can anyone advise on what versions to avoid? All I'm really after is good signal to noise (assuming that's background hissing?) And EAX in my XP build.

I see the SB Z is later still but hopefully still has XP drivers? It's also PCI-e x1 but that should be fine in my XP builds.

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Reply 1 of 11, by The Serpent Rider

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SB Z don't have XP support. Any card based on X-Fi standard PCI PCB should be fine. For best analog sound quality you can pick X-Fi Elite Pro or Auzen X-Fi Prelude.

Last edited by The Serpent Rider on 2022-08-08, 07:45. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 2 of 11, by Joseph_Joestar

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Almoststew1990 wrote on 2022-08-08, 07:36:

I see the SB Z is later still but hopefully still has XP drivers?

It doesn't.

The last X-Fi model with WinXP drivers is the X-Fi Titanium SB0880 PCIe. That's pretty much the best card that you can get for WinXP gaming. Avoid the "Extreme Audio" versions since they don't have hardware EAX.

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Reply 3 of 11, by Pierre32

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-08, 07:43:

Avoid the "Extreme Audio" versions since they don't have hardware EAX.

Yep, make sure it has the EMU chip. I think the Extreme Audio is the only dud in the range.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_X … the_X-Fi_Family

Reply 4 of 11, by The Serpent Rider

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You can use Audigy Rx (PCIe card) in Windows XP btw, which use Audigy 2 ZS/4 Pro chip.

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Reply 5 of 11, by Sphere478

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-08-08, 07:42:

SB Z don't have XP support. Any card based on X-Fi standard PCI PCB should be fine. For best analog sound quality you can pick X-Fi Elite Pro or Auzen X-Fi Prelude.

The auzentech x-fi might just be the best sound card ever made for pci in my opinion. It gets my vote 😀

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Reply 6 of 11, by auron

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if you think an audigy 2 ZS is temperamental, a PCI x-fi is about the worst thing to upgrade to. output quality would be a weird reason anyway as the audigy 2 zs output seems perfectly fine to me. all of these cards do suffer from bad capacitors around the voltage regulators though so that could be the reason for your problems (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUcQkAmIv2g).

i've never liked the x-fi series for their weird 3-mode concept, and some games like ut2004 are outright broken on them. doom 3 also comes to mind, where supposedly the only chance to play that game with EAX support but without the visual twitch bug is to use a certain audigy beta driver. so unless you really want to play that handful of EAX 5 games, i wouldn't bother with an x-fi.

Reply 7 of 11, by The Serpent Rider

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UT2004 has dedicated X-Fi patch, which use 64 Mb of sound card onboard memory for new samples.

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Reply 9 of 11, by auron

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The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-08-08, 23:08:

UT2004 has dedicated X-Fi patch, which use 64 Mb of sound card onboard memory for new samples.

yes, and it was garbage. this old thread basically mirrors my experience with x-fi and ut2004, except i tried both pci x-fi and pcie x-fi titanium: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/ut2004-and- … -sounds.191198/

to be fair i will say quake 4 and bf2 worked alright on the pcie x-fi.

Reply 10 of 11, by Almoststew1990

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Well I got an SB0880 but obviously as soon as I bought it my Audigy 2 ZS settled down and now works fine. I'll stick with this for the moment (I feel it's a better fit for my 939 system (and I'm going to be playing fear, doom 3 and Quake 4!) but will try out the X-Fi on a 775 system at some point.

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Reply 11 of 11, by DrLucienSanchez

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Is anyone able to test Bioshock with patch 1.1 on XP with an Audigy 2 ZS and the last official drivers please? I can enable EAX in the game, but when i have to restart for it to take effect, it reverts to EAX off again. I'be tried to manually set in the config, same issue, so unsure if an X-Fi is an actual requirement for it to run, as this may prompt me into purchasing an X-Fi.

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