There may be a problem with with X-Fi DSP chip powering (bad caps).

HugoBoss1985 wrote on 2025-10-25, 14:34:

This Soundcard works fine with Socket 775 hardware and a Windows XP 32 bit environment.

What Socket 775 motherboard and CPU?
Perhaps power-saving features may not be supported on this S775 board.

Have you tried disabling SpeedStep/EIST on Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z?

Also that there might be problems with the drivers.
Check this guide: Guide: Installing Windows XP drivers on PCIe X-Fi Titanium sound cards (version 1.2)

Hey, thanks for the reply/help.

-Maybe: there is another card on the way. It might be a coinsidence that is something wrong after the switch to this system.
I had also changed the Windows XP power savings from standard to "laptop" to have standby mode, etc.
Meanwhile I reflashed the bios and reïnstalled the system... it has been working OK but seeing that the issue was random I am not sure yet (haven't tested long enough)

-Asus P5E with QX6850

-I have not tried to disable any of those 2 bios settings

-I had basically already installed eveything like that guide/from that guide.

Except not OpenAL as that came with the XFI drivers 2.17.008 drivers (i did not install any additional apps for that)
But I also did not install EAX unified.
Don't know if ID-tech 4 requires that and I never needed to install those to have a trouble free experience with any Creative card (Audigy included).

But from this guide I found a very interesting detail.
In the Quake 4 console screenshot i see "Found EAX RAM extension, ..... "

My Quake 4 says that the EAX RAM extension is not found ! (with OpenAL enabled)
Everything else is found/working/enabled.
Maybe because that guide uses the Quake 4 demo instead of the fully patched GOG version I use?

More info to add:

Sometimes I don't have any sound at all after starting or rebooting the system.
I have to 1) disable/re-enable the card in device manager 2) reboot the system.

HugoBoss1985 wrote on 2025-10-28, 11:27:

My Quake 4 says that the EAX RAM extension is not found ! (with OpenAL enabled)
Everything else is found/working/enabled.
Maybe because that guide uses the Quake 4 demo instead of the fully patched GOG version I use?

Nah, I played through the GOG version of Quake 4 on my X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty, and it worked the same way as the demo. Meaning, X-RAM was properly detected and utilized by the game. Also, I had none of the problems with loud sounds that you describe.

I suggest downloading Creative's OpenAL Caps Viewer from here and seeing whether it correctly shows all of the card's features. If it does, the output should look similar to this:

However, if X-RAM isn't detected by that tool, then your card may potentially have some sort of hardware issue.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-10-29, 14:44:

Nah, I played through the GOG version of Quake 4 on my X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty, and it worked the same way as the demo. Meaning, […]
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HugoBoss1985 wrote on 2025-10-28, 11:27:

My Quake 4 says that the EAX RAM extension is not found ! (with OpenAL enabled)
Everything else is found/working/enabled.
Maybe because that guide uses the Quake 4 demo instead of the fully patched GOG version I use?

Nah, I played through the GOG version of Quake 4 on my X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty, and it worked the same way as the demo. Meaning, X-RAM was properly detected and utilized by the game. Also, I had none of the problems with loud sounds that you describe.

I suggest downloading Creative's OpenAL Caps Viewer from here and seeing whether it correctly shows all of the card's features. If it does, the output should look similar to this:

However, if X-RAM isn't detected by that tool, then your card may potentially have some sort of hardware issue.

Hey, thanks for your reply!
And thanks for the many guides and contributions you made on Vogons 😀
At least we know we can compare Quake 4 1:1

I also just tried Condemned Criminal Origins and all the ingame EAX options can be enabled.
Game works fine and sounds great.

And thanks for the link to that tool.
Well... X-RAM not found/not detected by that tool!
I plugged the card in my Windows 11 system and it was either automatically supplied with drivers or I had already had the card in here a long time ago.
Everything after EAX 2.0 is not found (because no support in W11 I presume) and once again, X-RAM is also not found.
But !!! I read somewhere that only the "Fatality" X-fi Titanium has the X-ram 😜.
My card is the SB0880; not the Fatality.
Sorry for bringing that up 😁

So if the issue persists/returns maybe I could try Daniel K's drivers?
Still... since I did a complete fresh SP3 XP32 bit re-install of this system I have not had the noise issue.
I did have the "no sound on XP startup" once.
I hope to receive another XFI Titanium soon to make sure this one is really defect and/or to exclude a driver issue.
I can't remember if the speaker icon in the lower right corner of the task bar was indeed "muted" but I don't believe so.
I did some more research about my card sometimes not booting with any sound in Windows XP...
I read somewhere that Fatality X-fi cards have some sort of driver bug where they detect headphones connected on reboot and they mute the audio?
So I changed that setting in the Creative Control Panel/settings.
Maybe that couple with the power saving settings I had set made the computer think it "rebooted" when I actually turned it off and hence the issue sometimes pops up?

But then again, I also never had that issue with this card in any other system before (had it in a 939 and 2 different 775 systems).

I think Google AI and Wikipedia might be wrong about ALL the Titanium cards supporting X-RAM.

On several websites I have read that X-RAM only is present on the Fatal1ty series.

I have also found that some Fatal1ty cards and the "standard" Titanium card share the same "SB0880" PCB code.

Found this article through Vogons.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071011182333/ht … ticles.x/9599/1
Credits to this post.
Re: Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi 2MB or 64MB (SB0460) ?

Something I found myself:

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/multimedia/crea … fi-pcie-p1.html

"The differences are easy to figure out. The "Fatal1ty" suffix traditionally stands for 64MB of X-RAM. Besides, both Fatal1ty cards have metal covers. The most expensive "Champion" card differs from the medium-priced modification by the control unit to be installed into a 3" or 5" bay."

"X-Fi Titanium, the cheapest PCI Express card with a fully-fledged DSP, but no X-RAM."

https://xfi.blogspot.com/2006/01/x-ram.html