Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Sound Card (70SB073A00000)
by Creative
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List Price: Our Price: $84.99 You Save: $14.91 (15%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $34.99 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Sound Card (70SB073A00000)
Customer Review: Not the performance booster I was hoping for
Summary: 3 Stars
Please keep in mind before reading this that I am NOT an audiophile.
Now, the primary reasons I bought this card were that it was on sale here for sixty five dollars, and because I read everywhere that it boosts performance by removing the audio processing load from the cpu. I currently run a Phenom II X4 945 and a Radeon HD 5770 which isn't amazing in the world of i7 setups, but I still might not be seeing as big of an improvement as some entry level systems would. In any case after properly configuring the card, it boosted my framerate by about 5-10fps depending on the game. Some games I was lucky to get one or two frame improvements out of. It sounds good, and is a definite improvement over my onboard audio, but I still don't think it's worth the full one hundred dollar price tag.
I also think it's worth mentioning that mine never came with the Vista install cd. Only XP and a demo disk. I didn't really care because I run Windows 7 and I've read other reviews talking about compatibility issues with 7 and the Vista drivers anyway, and it was no big deal to head over to creatives site and spend about ten min downloading everything I needed. On that note, the software interface looks cool, but is in need of some simplification and could be very confusing to some.
Customer Review: Excellent sound card for gaming and music!
Summary: 5 Stars
Pros:
This is the cheapest member of the true X-Fi family and also the best bang for the buck.
The first time I heard this card I was blown away! Compared to on-board audio, its pretty much night and day.
You will notice deep lows and rich mids, along with very clear highs. This card has everything you need and probably the best sound you can get under $100.
This thing even made bad speakers sound good. When you hook up good speakers or good earphones to this sound card, you will realize why it is important to have quality sound hardware.
This has true EAX support, not emulated as others.
The processor on the XtremeGamer actually takes the audio load from your CPU to increase performance by a few %.
Cons:
Creative software has a terrible repuation for problems and bloatware but don't let that judge the hardware! I think Creative is improving quickly.
Never use the disk which hardware comes with and always download the latest drivers from the manufacturer website.
Other Thoughts:
Great sound, great quality, and extreme potential with good speakers or good headphones.
Probably the best bang for the buck $100 or under.
Customer Review: No support
Summary: 1 Stars
Whats not listed here is that this is not compatible with Nforce motherboards. I personally have used the product and found it to be wanting. It says it's Vista compatable but not with my computer. I currently have an Nforce 4 mother board and when I purchased this I had Windows Vista home premium. Shortly after installing this card (and the latest drivers for it) I found that I had some odd crackling and popping in my speakers that slowly got worse and worse. I checked with creative and they blame it on Nvidia and they said to check with them. I checked with Nvidia and they have said it is creative's problem not theirs. As it turns out from checking many, many different forums and trouble shooting suggestions with this card it is not only my mother board, but many different mother boards that are affect by this(which basically means its creatives fault). Anyway with Vista I could reinstall the driver software and it would work for while and then degrade over the course of about 2 weeks and I would have to reinstall the driver once again. Now, I have changed my OS to Windows 7 and it will not work at all. It now causes the application to lock up completly. This is even though the driver says it is Windows 7 compatable. I will never purchase anything from creative againCustomer Review: Big Improvement in sound but drivers can be a hassle
Summary: 4 Stars
Easy installation. Remove all sound drivers from device manager. Open case, insert sound card. Turn on computer. Windows finds it and asks for the install disk. Put in install disk and install. Do a computer restart and I GOT THE BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH. After trying several different work arounds, including a windows repair I had to send my computer to a shop and have the harddrive formatted and Windows reinstalled. We can't prove the software caused the crash but I haven't had any problems until I installed this software. Even with a clean hardrive and fresh operating system I still had to install the software twice to get it to work.
But now that it is installed and working properly the sound is a vast improvement over the motherboard sound. I'm using the Logitec X-540 5.1 speakers and the sound is crisp, clean and clear. If the install would have went smoothly I would have given this 5 stars.
If I had to do it again I would not use the software but go directly to the Creative Sound website and load the updated driver directly from them.
My computer is less than a year old. I'm running windows XP, 2 gig ram on an Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe Motherboard with an AMD 64 X2 Dual Core Processor. I use Spysweeper and keep it up to date.
Customer Review: Fried
Summary: 1 Stars
BEWARE: Bought and installed X-Fi XtremeGamer in June. Unit did not work in December--verified by a state-licensed computer repair tech. Creative does not respond to my claims under (one year) warranty, and I quote: "Creative offers to you that hardware will be free from material defects ("Defect") in workmanship and material under normal use for a period of twelve (12) months from date of retail purchase by original end-user purchaser ("Warranty Period")."
Creative Labs makes it VERY difficult to make any warranty claim. Try finding a phone number on their website. Even email is difficult to find. This is because, and again I quote, "To obtain the fastest, most appropriate service for your Creative Product, you should first make use of Creative's on-line resources to diagnose and attempt to resolve the problem there."
My local computer tech says he replaces hundreds of sound cards every year in his business: "You'd be surprised how often they fail within a year." He has two large boxes of failed Soundblaster cards to back up his claim.
My previous Sound Blaster card lasted 3 years; current card only 6 months--at $80, a rather expensive mistake.