Soundblaster X-Fi a complete waste of $?

[PanzerHans]

I had high hopes for my new X-fi card, but so far the thing has only let me down.

* Pops and crackle seems to be comming out of that thing all the time in BF-2142
* I was working happily on my PC doing some work when suddenly the card decided to throw of an awfull constant high pitch scream(at 100% volume). I almost fell off my chair(with my headphones on)

Anyone have the same experience?

[=Sarc=]

I've been lucky with my X-Fi. I've been using it for about two months and did not experience crackling in any games (2142 included). No high pitched whines or crashing due to sound.

The one problem I've had is the occasional disappearance of the card after a reboot. It was due to the Gigabyte DS3 not detecting the card and was fixed in a BIOS update.

[Squinty]

I have been there in regards to my X-FI fatality when I built a new PC a while back. I had the popping and crackling. Sound going out, the sudden high pitched whine wearing headphones that probably caused me some hearing damage. Especially in BF2. I also would have the system often freeze on the high pitched whine.

There's been alot of discussion about this issue at Creative's Discussion forum and when I researched possible causes and solutions I found quite a few for both. They seemed all over the place and seemed to depend alot on the hardware people had.

Here's a few that suggestions that might be helpful.

Creatives Stance on Issue: Here

Someone with similar setup as yours?


My Setup is:
AMD 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ Processor
ASUS A8N-SLI PREMIUM NF4 SLI Motherboard
3GB Corsair 3200PRO - DDR Memory
Windows XP Pro OS
Enermax 600W Power Supply
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty Edition 24-bit 7.1 Sound Card

I'm not complety sure what I did to finally get it to stabilize and working correctly. I do know it came down to altering setting in BIOS for the board.

• I do have the Cool ' n' Quiet Contol Disabled.
• I also had to take Hyper Transport Frequency off of Auto for my Dual Core.

Somethings I tried that didn't work for me but might work for you include:

• Moving the sound card to different PCI slots.
• Adjusting the cable that goes to the front bay. (Although I noticed i could cause crackling by moving the cable around it didn't seem to be the root cause)
• Turning my master volume to below 50%. Then turning the speakers higher.
• Uninstalled X-Fi software fully, removed card from Device Manager then reinstalled with latest drivers.

[BHack]

wow, i read that thread. What a crappy situation to be in.

[PanzerHans]

Thanks Squinty. That is an amazing amount of information served on a platter

System spec:
Via-KT8000-NEO2 chipset
AMD64 3800+ on a 939 socket
2GB Ram(PC4000) running on Dual Channel
XP Pro Eng
Hiper 580W PSU
X1950pro AGP graphics card.

Bios setup:
Cool & Quiet is off
Hypertransport untouched(will check that)

Here is a tool to check PCI bus latency.

[Lorian]

"The findings indicate that circumstances causing these audio glitches only arise on Nvidias nForce 4 range of motherboards"

Bah, I have an nForce 4 motherboard... I hope it doesn't happen to me, hasn't happened yet.

[jmaker]

Originally Posted by PanzerHans

I had high hopes for my new X-fi card, but so far the thing has only let me down.

* Pops and crackle seems to be comming out of that thing all the time in BF-2142
* I was working happily on my PC doing some work when suddenly the card decided to throw of an awfull constant high pitch scream(at 100% volume). I almost fell off my chair(with my headphones on)

Anyone have the same experience?

Unfortunately, I have have had both happen. The high pitched scream only happened once or twice, but the popping and crackling are constant.

[Zoopy_T]

I have had an X-Fi Platinum for almost a year, and had absolutly no problems with it. What type of X-Fi do the people with problems have? If you all have problems with the Fatality series or above, it might be some weird hardware issue (maybe the X-RAM or something).

I have a A8N32-sli (nForce 4) motherboard also.

[Apophis]

Here's an amusing story...

I bought a Soundblaster Audigy 2 as soon as it was released. I had constant crackles and pops and got really frustrated with the card. I ended up having it replaced for a new card thinking it was a hardware issue with the card itself. The new card exhibited the same problems. Damn. I was getting really annoyed and started wondering if it was a game issue. Different game, same problems. Damn again.. What can I do..

A few months later I ended up switching from AMD back to Intel and for giggles I decided to throw the Audigy 2 card back in my PC. Guess what? No more pops and crackles. It's worked fine ever since. My problem seemed to be related to AMD. I had various chipsets during my AMD days as well, including the nForce and nForce2 chips. Cracks and pops no matter what my chipset was.

[Grunt 70]

It'd be interesting to know what percentage of those with the audio glitch have amd vs intel chips. I'd bet there'd be a lot of gamers in the mix and up till recently AMD has been king of the gamer market recently.

[asch]

Here is my setup... and I have had zero problems with my X-Fi card.

# eVGA 512-P2-N635-AR GeForce 7950GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - Retail
# ENERMAX Liberty ELT620AWT ATX12V 620W Power Supply - Retail
# Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
# Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card - Retail
# ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium/WiFi-AP Socket T (LGA 775) NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
# CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C4 - Retail
# ZALMAN CNPS9500 LED 92mm 2 Ball Blue LED Light Cooling Fan with Heatsink - Retail
# Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6600 - Retail

[Kittamaru]

More info on this would be great

[PanzerHans]

What kind of more info do you mean?
There is a vast amount of info in the links provided by Squinty and I've linked to a PCI latency check program.

Officially the problem is due to the PCI bus having latency hickups.

[Rock]

I have x-fi fatality card, i have had and still have same problems as you all mention.

For the price i paid for the card, you would of thought it would be good, with some kind of customer service!

Panzer i downloaded the pci checker here is what it says


Some device drivers on this machine behave bad and will probably cause drop-outs in real-time audio and/or video streams. To isolate the misbehaving driver use device manager and disable/re-enable various devices one by one, blah blah blah

[P8riot]

Originally Posted by PanzerHans

I had high hopes for my new X-fi card, but so far the thing has only let me down.

* Pops and crackle seems to be comming out of that thing all the time in BF-2142
* I was working happily on my PC doing some work when suddenly the card decided to throw of an awfull constant high pitch scream(at 100% volume). I almost fell off my chair(with my headphones on)

Anyone have the same experience?

I've had this happen with all the Audigy series to date, but not the X-Fi. All running many degrees of the intel chipset and CPU. With full regard to Squinty's excellent information, the issues seem to disappear over a short time - usually and magically around the time of a new driver release.