I'm currently making changes to my rigs and I tried to figure out does the 64MB X-Fi cards have any real benefit over the regular 2MB cards. I found only one review that tested that and according to their testing using 64MB card increased fps like 0.1%. (Edit: or did it only drop CPU usage by 0.1%? Can't remember /edit) I'm not even sure does that go for any and all games or just the games that make use of that 64MB ram and the only one game I know to do that is UT2004 with the X-Fi patch. Maybe possibly Quake 4 too? If anyone knows others feel free to chime in.

Seems to me the 2MB cards are just as good in practice. Either way I still pulled the 64MB fatality X-Fi card from my P4 box and installed it to my new xp/7 rig I'm putting together and got a cheap 2MB X-Fi for the P4 box as a replacement. At least for now, until I find a pcie X-Fi titanium with a reasonable price

Sombrero wrote on 2022-08-16, 17:09:

I'm currently making changes to my rigs and I tried to figure out does the 64MB X-Fi cards have any real benefit over the regular 2MB cards. I found only one review that tested that and according to their testing using 64MB card increased fps like 0.1%. (Edit: or did it only drop CPU usage by 0.1%? Can't remember /edit) I'm not even sure does that go for any and all games or just the games that make use of that 64MB ram and the only one game I know to do that is UT2004 with the X-Fi patch. Maybe possibly Quake 4 too? If anyone knows others feel free to chime in.

Seems to me the 2MB cards are just as good in practice.

My understanding is that a game must be programmed to use the extra RAM...
And to be honest i only know 1 game that does use it: Quake 4

BUT as always: Better to have it then to need it ... i guess 😁

The EMU2K20 xxx are hardware acceleration, while ones that are not, relies on CPU for processing.

That is significant. Also there is some that are 16MB versions.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-08-16, 23:14:

The EMU2K20 xxx are hardware acceleration, while ones that are not, relies on CPU for processing.

That is significant. Also there is some that are 16MB versions.

Cheers,

The SB0460 mentioned in the title was not available in 16MB .
Please have a look at this website about the chips : https://wiki.debian.org/X-Fi
The X-Fi Extreme Audio with CA0106 (or CA0110) also was not the SB0460.

Have you found a different version of the SB0460 with 16MB and/or CA0106 chip, then please linke them here.
Note: The CA0106 is a QFP package and the CA20K1 ia a BGA package.

Here is a link where you can see a SB0460 without heatsink. The chip is labeled "CA20K1". https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/x-fi-xt … r-review,3.html

Umm, I am noob, but why does it need 64MB onboard memory soundcards for a PCI slot? For ISA cards, I can imagine the acceleration thanks to local memory, but for PCI?
I'm just asking to learn.

Similar to how Gravis Ultrasound works, X-Fi use memory to buffer sound samples to improve perfromance in games (or potentially any software which can utilize DirectSound3D or OpenAL). But realistically - 64 Mb was useless outside of few games, especially on PCIe cards. It's "nice to have" thing mostly.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-08-17, 09:40:

Similar to how Gravis Ultrasound works, X-Fi use memory to buffer sound samples to improve perfromance in games (or potentially any software which can utilize DirectSound3D or OpenAL). But realistically - 64 Mb was useless outside of few games, especially on PCIe cards. It's "nice to have" thing mostly.

Exactly. I think it was more like a marketing move by creative.
The best thing they could do was brand these models as "Fatal1ty" to appeal to gamers wich spend more money on hardware anyway.

Thank you for explaining, so more of a gimmick like 512MB DDR on GeForce 6200LE...

I had one of those x-fi fatal1ty in my gaming rig as a teenager. I had it paired up with that big Logitech 5.1 surround system everyone has back in the day. I highly doubt the ram meant literally anything, but I remember buying the fatal1ty version because of it. Well I was a teenager, I was the target audience I guess 🤣. It did sound incredible with those speakers tho. That card went through a few of rigs and stuck around for awhile.

At some point I upgraded to the newer x-fi that was the USB one with the volume knob because I was using headphones 90% of the time. No idea what happened to the card, but the USB unit is there around here somewhere. I should prob dig it out, I bet it sounds allot better than the sound my TV's headphone out port is making from nvidia's HDMI.

I just remember back then from reviews that the 64mb does nothing for gaming in like 99.9% of the titles. I went with 2mb version back then and probably will be going with that again.

DerBaum wrote on 2022-08-17, 08:47:

The SB0460 mentioned in the title was not available in 16MB . Please have a look at this website about the chips : https://wiki. […]
Show full quote

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-08-16, 23:14:

The EMU2K20 xxx are hardware acceleration, while ones that are not, relies on CPU for processing.

That is significant. Also there is some that are 16MB versions.

Cheers,

The SB0460 mentioned in the title was not available in 16MB .
Please have a look at this website about the chips : https://wiki.debian.org/X-Fi
The X-Fi Extreme Audio with CA0106 (or CA0110) also was not the SB0460.

Have you found a different version of the SB0460 with 16MB and/or CA0106 chip, then please linke them here.
Note: The CA0106 is a QFP package and the CA20K1 ia a BGA package.

Here is a link where you can see a SB0460 without heatsink. The chip is labeled "CA20K1". https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/x-fi-xt … r-review,3.html

I have added a picture of my SB0460 with the following ISSA 16MB memory chip on it:

https://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pd … 6100C1-7TL.html

According to their respective console outputs, Doom 3, Quake 4 and Prey can all make use of X-RAM. After starting one of those games, if you open the console, and scroll up to the audio section, you get something like this:

Other than that, I think Unreal Tournament 2004 with the EAX 5.0 patch applied can use X-RAM as well. And Unreal Tournament 3 (2007) can utilize it out of the box. Battlefield 2 (when fully patched) and Battlefield 2142 likely use X-RAM too, since they support X-Fi cards specifically. There are probably other games which make use of X-RAM, but these are the ones that I'm aware of.

As to whether this has any benefit on actual game performance, I don't know. With the high power WinXP systems that most of us end up building, it's difficult to say one way or the other. This Anandtech review has some benchmarks using period correct hardware, if anyone's interested. But I'm not sure if the games they used had been fully patched to properly support X-RAM at that time.

Doom3 visually twitches with EAX enabled. Someone has built a patch to fix up Doom3, Prey and Quake4 EAX issues though.
https://github.com/bibendovsky/eaxefx?tab=readme-ov-file

I have never found a game that tangibly benefits from XRAM. Perhaps Battlefield 2142. I've never tried that one. Creative product segmentation had the 64MB only available on the high end cards so the market share must have been miniscule. I can't imagine a game developer voluntarily investing in that.

Here's a classic Tech Report review on XFi with XRAM tests.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011182333/ht … ticles.x/9599/1

The ISA Sound Blaster AWE cards could store audio samples in their RAM using DirectSound static buffers. I don't know if any games used that capability.

AlexD wrote on 2024-07-01, 07:09:

DerBaum wrote on 2022-08-17, 08:47:

The SB0460 mentioned in the title was not available in 16MB . Please have a look at this website about the chips : https://wiki. […]
Show full quote

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-08-16, 23:14:

The EMU2K20 xxx are hardware acceleration, while ones that are not, relies on CPU for processing.

That is significant. Also there is some that are 16MB versions.

Cheers,

The SB0460 mentioned in the title was not available in 16MB .
Please have a look at this website about the chips : https://wiki.debian.org/X-Fi
The X-Fi Extreme Audio with CA0106 (or CA0110) also was not the SB0460.

Have you found a different version of the SB0460 with 16MB and/or CA0106 chip, then please linke them here.
Note: The CA0106 is a QFP package and the CA20K1 ia a BGA package.

Here is a link where you can see a SB0460 without heatsink. The chip is labeled "CA20K1". https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/x-fi-xt … r-review,3.html

I have added a picture of my SB0460 with the following ISSA 16MB memory chip on it:

https://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pd … 6100C1-7TL.html

16Mbit = 2MByte. 😀 You have a 2MB card. Or a 16Mb. 😉