sharangad wrote on 2026-08-13, 11:38:

"3. Untrustworthy Software DetectionLegacy testing utilities like RightMark 3DSound or older OpenAL caps viewers often break on Windows 10 and 11. They read the modern Windows memory abstraction layer incorrectly and report 0 MB or "Not Found" even if the audio driver is utilizing the X-RAM natively behind the scenes."

Try Falcosoft's OpenAL Test 1.5 which is attached here.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-08-13, 11:53:

sharangad wrote on 2026-08-13, 11:38:

"3. Untrustworthy Software DetectionLegacy testing utilities like RightMark 3DSound or older OpenAL caps viewers often break on Windows 10 and 11. They read the modern Windows memory abstraction layer incorrectly and report 0 MB or "Not Found" even if the audio driver is utilizing the X-RAM natively behind the scenes."

Try Falcosoft's OpenAL Test 1.5 which is attached here.

Nope, no x-ram reported.

sharangad wrote on 2026-08-13, 12:32:

Nope, no x-ram reported.

Here's a screenshot from my system:

As mentioned before, I'm running Win10 LTSC IoT 21H2 with DanielK's latest X-Fi support pack. Also, this rig has 16GB RAM, and everything still works fine.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-08-13, 14:13:

Here's a screenshot from my system: […]
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sharangad wrote on 2026-08-13, 12:32:

Nope, no x-ram reported.

Here's a screenshot from my system:

The attachment X-RAM_Win10.jpg is no longer available

As mentioned before, I'm running Win10 LTSC IoT 21H2 with DanielK's latest X-Fi support pack. Also, this rig has 16GB RAM, and everything still works fine.

I guess my card has had its xram stripped or something. I'll try it on xp later, though there's probably no point. Neither alcaps viewer nor the falcosoft app detect any xram. Everything else is there, eax upto 5 and efx with 128 streams.

I can't reinstall the drivers on Win 11. I get a driver violates policy error for two driver files, ct_aud2k and efxxf. Sys. I thought it was the new driver cross signing policy, but Creative's own driver doesn't install either. This is right after yesterday's windows updates.

I don't know if disabling driver signature enforcement will help.

The card worked perfectly on Win 11 and still does on Win 10.

One mystery's solved, even though the card has the black shield with the fatality symbol, Creative Product Registration detects it as an PCI-e X-Fi Titanium.

So the card doesn't have X-RAM. The guy who sold it did label it as an X-Fi titanium but the pictures were of the ti pro with the fatality logo. The card does in fact look exactly like the photos and the description does in fact say x-fi titanium.

It's a bit misleading in that the X-Fi titanium didn't come with the shield, so I'm guessing the seller was being a bit Creative (https://www.ebay.com/itm/226829823497).

The other mystery with the drivers is probably that I had the RX drivers installed and these are probably trusted untrustworthy drivers (on MS's allowed blacklisted driver list). If you already have a blacklisted driver installed, others can be installed. Since the RX is tolerated, I could probably pull out the RX and install the X-Fi software without a problem and once that's in I can reinstall the X-Fi drivers to my heart's content, but only as long as I don't completely uninstall it. My mistake testing for X-RAM was probably uninstalling the X-Fi and RX drivers.

sharangad wrote on 2026-08-14, 02:11:

One mystery's solved, even though the card has the black shield with the fatality symbol, Creative Product Registration detects it as an PCI-e X-Fi Titanium.

So the card doesn't have X-RAM. The guy who sold it did label it as an X-Fi titanium but the pictures were of the ti pro with the fatality logo. The card does in fact look exactly like the photos and the description does in fact say x-fi titanium.

Those pictures are a bit blurry, but I can make out SB0886 in the serial number on the back. That indicates the card is either an X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro or Champion, as per Creative's support page. Both of those should have 64MB X-RAM, unless the hardware got damaged somehow.

It's more likely that your issues are caused by some driver shenanigans. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but it's best to perform a clean install of Windows when dealing with Creative's crappy drivers. Even when removed, they leave behind some files, which can mess up any future driver installation attempts. Hence my recommendation to try the card on a freshly installed WinXP system using the official driver CD that came with it.

OK, the weird issue with the xfi drivers wasn't limited to my system. A bunch of redditors on the official sound blaster reddit are complaining about missing sound devices and unsigned driver errors after the August update.

I did manage to reinstall them and no there's no xram there either. I did try the card on a win10 (fully patched) core 2 system that's never had any creative drivers installed and there was no X-RAM reported.

I need to get a small ssd and install xp on it to test this. I'm not fussed about the xram though. My first xfi was a pci xtreme music and that didn't have it either but the games ran just fine. There were horror stories about static and all sorts of things, but I never experienced them on p4/ amd 64/x2 /core 2 systems. But the card randomly wasn't detected by windows so I got an x-fi ti pro which was unusable on windows 7. Ditched it for an xonar d2. The ti pro disappeared during a house move.

One thing I noticed with the ti pro over headphones without any processing is that it sounds highly processed. The second hand ti pro is exactly the same. The xtreme music over headphones didn't sound anywhere near as processed. The headphone positioning is much better on the ti pro though.

Dirt Demo with EAX5:
https://youtu.be/z5b7oL8G1vo
For comparison Dirt on the Audigy RX (No EAX, this game only supports 5):
https://youtu.be/hKu00OkDzqw

sharangad wrote on 2026-08-17, 16:57:

One thing I noticed with the ti pro over headphones without any processing is that it sounds highly processed. The second hand ti pro is exactly the same. The xtreme music over headphones didn't sound anywhere near as processed. The headphone positioning is much better on the ti pro though.

Probably due to CMSS, which is enabled by default on a fresh driver installation. Try turning it off and check if it makes a difference.

Specifically, the X-Fi uses a more advanced version of CMSS-3D Headphone compared to Audigy cards. For more details, see this section of the Vogons Wiki EAX page.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-08-18, 18:03:

sharangad wrote on 2026-08-17, 16:57:

One thing I noticed with the ti pro over headphones without any processing is that it sounds highly processed. The second hand ti pro is exactly the same. The xtreme music over headphones didn't sound anywhere near as processed. The headphone positioning is much better on the ti pro though.

Probably due to CMSS, which is enabled by default on a fresh driver installation. Try turning it off and check if it makes a difference.

Specifically, the X-Fi uses a more advanced version of CMSS-3D Headphone compared to Audigy cards. For more details, see this section of the Vogons Wiki EAX page.

No I get that CMSS is enhanced on the X-Fi. What I meant is that it sounded different between EMU20k1 (Extreme Music) and 20k2 (X-Fi Ti). I noticed it on upgrading back in 2010. I did have CMSS enabled with both.

There were two warranty stickers on a screw, one of which was torn, connecting the em sheath to card. I think this is a vanilla ti with the shield.

sharangad wrote on 2026-08-20, 03:27:

There were two warranty stickers on a screw, one of which was torn, connecting the em sheath to card. I think this is a vanilla ti with the shield.

This picture is slightly different from the eBay listing that you linked to earlier. The eBay pic had SB0886 in the serial number, but the one you posted now has SB0889 instead. I've marked the relevant bit.

There doesn't seem to be much info on the SB0889, but the few places where it does pop up (e.g. here) list it as an X-Fi Titanium OEM. With that in mind, it's possible that your card doesn't actually have X-RAM, due to it being an OEM model.

Google Ai suggests this:
Standard X-Fi Titanium: Ships bare without the shield (though some regional or professional audio variants included it optionally).

Google did also hint that the vanilla titanium was sold as a fatality variant with the em sheath in some regions (despite being a standard ti without xram).

This site has a ti which looks like a ti pro:
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/crea … titanium-sb0880

This is from the driver page that I linked to earlier:

• Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium (SB0880)
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium OEM (SB0881)
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium OEM (SB0883)
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium OEM (SB0887)
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium OEM (SB0889)
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series (SB0886)
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Professional Fatal1ty Series (SB0886)
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Professional Audio Titanium (SB0888)

Only the Fatal1ty models (SB0886) are specified to have 64MB X-RAM. The regular X-Fi Titanium (SB0880) is supposed to have 16MB X-RAM. But I couldn't find any info regarding the X-RAM amount on the OEM models (SB0881, SB0883, SB0887, SB0889). Also, it seems that just having the EMI shield doesn't necessarily mean it's a Fatal1ty model. The serial number needs to contain SB0886 for that to be true.

Accordingly to this post, the OEM revisions were green: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/sound-blast … ariants.458925/

This card is dark and has dark connector backplane, but as you said it's definitely an oem version because it's missing two internal connectors. It just has an Azalia front panel connector.

Prince of Persia - Sands of Time on the Audigy RX:
https://youtu.be/Ag0FILRhc8s?si=Q_DucYVIf0NjE0Wg

I'll update this with an X-Fi link.