For the best EAX experience, get an X-Fi Titanium PCI-e SB0880.

I use one in my WinXP machine and another one on my Win7 rig. It works fine on both systems, thanks to DanielK's drivers.

Windows7 does not support EAX. You either need to use games that support OpenAL, or emulate EAX is software (e.g. Creative Alchemy).

kolderman wrote on 2021-10-17, 18:02:

Windows7 does not support EAX. You either need to use games that support OpenAL, or emulate EAX is software (e.g. Creative Alchemy).

Alchemy is more of a wrapper than emulation, at least if Creative's FAQ is to be believed. It translates DirectSound3D into OpenAL calls, which supposedly still results in hardware accelerated 3D audio.

That said, WinXP is the better choice since it supports EAX natively, without needing a wrapper or emulation. But Alchemy can produce good results in supported games under Win7.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-17, 17:32:

For the best EAX experience, get an X-Fi Titanium PCI-e SB0880.

I use one in my WinXP machine and another one on my Win7 rig. It works fine on both systems, thanks to DanielK's drivers.

Thanks- it looks like a good fit. Do you know if there's any functional difference between a dell OEM version and a retail version? (found a dell one for cheap and feel like I have to ask given how they changed the SBLive card).

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-17, 18:31:

Alchemy is more of a wrapper than emulation, at least if Creative's FAQ is to be believed. It translates DirectSound3D into OpenAL calls, which supposedly still results in hardware accelerated 3D audio.

For Creative there are two different OpenAL implementations depending of the sound card which are called sens_oal.dll and ct_oal.dll, where the latter is hardware accelerated. The X-Fi series uses ct_oal.dll except Xtreme Audio cards and X-Fi MB.

jfarms wrote on 2021-10-17, 18:38:

Thanks- it looks like a good fit. Do you know if there's any functional difference between a dell OEM version and a retail version? (found a dell one for cheap and feel like I have to ask given how they changed the SBLive card).

The hardware is supposed to be identical between the Dell OEM and the retail versions of the SB0880, but I'm not 100% sure about this. The Dell card did use different drivers back then though.

Nowadays, DanielK's driver pack handles both versions of the card just fine.

kolderman wrote on 2021-10-17, 18:02:

Windows7 does not support EAX. You either need to use games that support OpenAL, or emulate EAX is software (e.g. Creative Alchemy).

That's exactly why I want a dual boot system actually. W7 just for XP-era games that have modern patches/mods that I can't run in XP but don't want to give up (eg Icewind Dale). XP for EAX/everything else.

I use a XFi Titanium in Win10 for OpenAL games (e.g. Bioschock) and it works fine for both that as well as everyday use. It's not as clean as my onboard Realtek audio but thats what 10 years does.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-10-17, 18:49:

jfarms wrote on 2021-10-17, 18:38:

Thanks- it looks like a good fit. Do you know if there's any functional difference between a dell OEM version and a retail version? (found a dell one for cheap and feel like I have to ask given how they changed the SBLive card).

The hardware is supposed to be identical between the Dell OEM and the retail versions of the SB0880, but I'm not 100% sure about this. The Dell card did use different drivers back then though.

Nowadays, DanielK's driver pack handles both versions of the card just fine.

Just curious- do you know if any of their USB sound cards are viable options?

jfarms wrote on 2021-10-18, 15:59:

Just curious- do you know if any of their USB sound cards are viable options?

Never used one, so I can't really say.

jfarms wrote on 2021-10-17, 17:21:

In the perfect world it'd be a low profile pcie card

Looks like the perfect choice for you is Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1, the only low-profile PCIe card with an X-Fi chip.

HTH

jfarms wrote on 2021-10-17, 17:21:

I found the SB0790 PCI sound blaster X-FI as an option, but it doesn't have full EAX support- just 4.0 - from what I saw on the amazon listing for it.

It looks like the PCI SB0790 is the X-Fi Xtreme Audio card that doesn't have the EMU20K1 chip.

I recently picked up a PCI X-Fi XtremeMusic (SB0460) for about $20 used and successfully use it on a dual boot XP and 10 machine and haven't had any problems in either OS. I wasn't able to load Creative's own software/driver pack in Windows 10 for some reason, however, Windows Update found drivers for it that work fine. In XP, it's handled every EAX game that I've thrown at it so far. The PCI SB0460 might be a good option for you if you can't find a reasonably priced X-Fi PCIe Titanium.