I must be out of touch with modern sound card technology. Apparently, Creative jumped the Audigy 3 and went straight to the Audigy 4, and they've now announced the SoundBlaster X-Fi, which is a stupid name if I've
ever heard one.
Their new "gaming" sound card sounds freakin' crazy. 64MB of RAM on a soundcard? That's sheer lunacy! Of course, for $279.99 you'd expect a pretty decent card.
http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=1&subcategory=208&product=1... Quote:Designed to meet the performance demands of the world's best-known professional gamer, Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty™ FPS sound card provides stunning 109dB SNR audio quality, accelerates gaming performance and includes 64MB of on-board X-RAM for high performance gaming. With support for EAX® ADVANCED HD™ 5.0, the latest version of the EAX Environmental Audio standard, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS card utilizes X-Fi CMSS 3D technology for stunning audio realism over headphones in LAN gaming. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS features a convenient front-facing internal drive bay for easy connectivity, plus the X-Fi IR remote to easily access and control all digital entertainment, and to control the X-Fi 24-bit Crystalizer, X-Fi CMSS 3D, 3DMIDI and EAX. In addition to providing outstanding gaming performance, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS includes all of the standard features, application software, power and performance capabilities of the Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum and Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic.
I don't know about you guys, but that sounds like a big fat pile of marketing to me. As in, "Watch out, don't step in the marketing!"
Have you guys heard anything about these cards? I'm still running an original Audigy Platinum, so I might have to look into upgrading my soundcard to one of these bad boys sometime early next year. Thoughts?
-b0b
(...needs some new speakers, too.)