BF2S Forums Sounds Cards?

vjs wrote:

Sorry but I'll boast my own post here as pretty much definative i've been looking into this for quite some time now.

I just read a pretty definitive article on the X-Fi series, they basically stated that all X-Fi are pretty much the same. With the exception of the memory 2Mb instead of 64Mb which doesn't do much for you when your just playing games.

Also all sound cards currently are pretty much PCI based and would require serious rework to go PCI-e (The future). [When I say go PCI-e I mean actually use the advantages of PCI-e over PCI as opposed to simply making a PCI-e slot version. Even the simple slot change will take work however, and they said creative had no present plans to do so. The author also commented that they are still selling creative SB 16's so...

I also saw a different article that said there was very little difference between the Audigy2ZS and the 4 except the 4 was made with better components and a better S/N ratio.

Benchmarks with EAX enabled showed improvements in frame rates using a lowerrange system and they were as a previous poster stated around 5 fps. They were comparing it to the 2ZS

Conculsuion:

The X-Fi is pretty much here to stay for a while until PCI-e cards start coming out. So if your going to up grade for gaming get any X-Fi and your good for quite a few years. The major differences are simply the break out boxes or if you use your computer for other audio task, movies, recording, mixing, etc the extremem music might not be the best choice since it's simply THE card.

So, don't expect anything new for quite some time easpecially from creative. Also current games hardly take full advantage of the X-Fi cards anyways.

Personally I'm saving up for the Fraility since I like the idea of a breakout box and volume control etc.

Agent_Dung_Bomb wrote:

Janus67 wrote:

vjs wrote:

Sorry but I'll boast my own post here as pretty much definative i've been looking into this for quite some time now.

I just read a pretty definitive article on the X-Fi series, they basically stated that all X-Fi are pretty much the same. With the exception of the memory 2Mb instead of 64Mb which doesn't do much for you when your just playing games.

Also all sound cards currently are pretty much PCI based and would require serious rework to go PCI-e (The future). [When I say go PCI-e I mean actually use the advantages of PCI-e over PCI as opposed to simply making a PCI-e slot version. Even the simple slot change will take work however, and they said creative had no present plans to do so. The author also commented that they are still selling creative SB 16's so...

I also saw a different article that said there was very little difference between the Audigy2ZS and the 4 except the 4 was made with better components and a better S/N ratio.

Benchmarks with EAX enabled showed improvements in frame rates using a lowerrange system and they were as a previous poster stated around 5 fps. They were comparing it to the 2ZS

Conculsuion:

The X-Fi is pretty much here to stay for a while until PCI-e cards start coming out. So if your going to up grade for gaming get any X-Fi and your good for quite a few years. The major differences are simply the break out boxes or if you use your computer for other audio task, movies, recording, mixing, etc the extremem music might not be the best choice since it's simply THE card.

So, don't expect anything new for quite some time easpecially from creative. Also current games hardly take full advantage of the X-Fi cards anyways.

Personally I'm saving up for the Fraility since I like the idea of a breakout box and volume control etc.

From what I have also read (or listened to recently on the ExtremeTech podcast) that they will probably not port over sound cards to PCI-E because of latency issues.  Although it has increased bandwidth between the card and the PCI-E bus over the PCI bus (32vs16 I believe) it would be difficult to make it re-sync to the right speeds, and seeing how the sound cards do not even use the bandwidth or saturate it at all of the PCI bus, it isn't really necessary for those to be ported over.

They aren't going to have much choice.  Just like PCI replaced ISA, and co-existed for awhile, ISA eventually went away.  PCI-e is going to replace PCI, just like PCI-e has already replaced AGP, and it will eventually be gone.  PCI-e is going to become a universal bus to replace the separate busses previously being used.