Friday, May 16th 2008
Creative Unveils X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Series PCI-E Sound Cards
Creative, a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products, today announces the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series and PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series sound cards, unleashing the full power of Creative X-Fi hardware audio processing for PCI Express-based PCs.
The new PCI Express Creative sound cards each feature a striking design that screams "high performance." Creative will equip the world's best professional PC gamers, who are now competing in the Championship Gaming Series (CGS), with the new PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series, the official sound card of the CGS, the only worldwide professional video gaming league.
"Audio plays a huge factor in professional gaming, where every competitive advantage can make the difference between winning and losing. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty edition sound cards significantly enhance any professional gaming rig, enabling us to hear what we can't see and perform at our highest level," said Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, world champion gaming legend and exclusive on-air analyst for the CGS.
"I demand extreme performance from my PC, and I won't settle for less than Sound Blaster X-Fi. It gives me the huge advantage of hearing my opponent before they can see me, and finishing them off before they can do anything about it," said Yazan "Clown" Ammari, Counter-Strike Source member of the San Francisco Optx CGS team.
"We've developed the PCI Express models of our Sound Blaster X-Fi gaming sound cards to meet the specific requests that we've received from end users," said Steve Erickson, VP and GM of audio and VLSI for Creative. "We have re-architected our X-Fi processor so we can deliver even more performance and provide the best audio available on the PC today. You'll know why it's worth the upgrade to PCI Express the second you hear it. We've also added Dolby Digital encoding, for connection to a home theater system for an awesome gaming experience. We created an entirely
new I/O drive with an innovative design that can fit either a 3 ½" or 5 ¼" drive bay. Plus, the Sound Blaster Titanium series cards are optimized for Windows Vista with UAA-compliant hardware."
The PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series features Dolby Digital encoding, for single-cable connection to home theater systems. The card leverages the power of the X-Fi processor optimized for PCI Express to deliver accelerated audio for improved game performance, with ultra-realistic EAX 5.0 effects and 3D positional audio. Hardware-powered 3D positional audio and EAX 5.0 effects provide stunning positional audio realism over headphones and speakers, for a much more immersive gaming experience than any motherboard audio solution can offer. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series also vastly improves voice chat clarity in online games where collaboration is vital.
"With its superb audio fidelity, EAX 5.0 support, and 128 hardware-accelerated voices, the Sound Blaster X-Fi is simply the best way to experience the rich soundscape of Guild Wars. Gamers who really care about how their PCs sound should give it a serious listen," said James Boer, ArenaNet audio programmer and Game Audio Programming author.
The new PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series sound card includes all of the features of the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series, plus an internal I/O drive for quick front panel connection to headphones and headsets. This versatile internal I/O drive design offers the choice of placement in either a 3 ½" or 5 ¼" drive bay. The 3 ½" drive features mic-in and headphone-out connections. This drive slides inside the 5 ¼" drive, which adds RCA line-in connections.
The world's first native PCI Express hardware accelerated sound cards, the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series and PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Championship Series sound cards also feature:
Source:
Creative
"Audio plays a huge factor in professional gaming, where every competitive advantage can make the difference between winning and losing. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty edition sound cards significantly enhance any professional gaming rig, enabling us to hear what we can't see and perform at our highest level," said Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, world champion gaming legend and exclusive on-air analyst for the CGS.
"I demand extreme performance from my PC, and I won't settle for less than Sound Blaster X-Fi. It gives me the huge advantage of hearing my opponent before they can see me, and finishing them off before they can do anything about it," said Yazan "Clown" Ammari, Counter-Strike Source member of the San Francisco Optx CGS team.
"We've developed the PCI Express models of our Sound Blaster X-Fi gaming sound cards to meet the specific requests that we've received from end users," said Steve Erickson, VP and GM of audio and VLSI for Creative. "We have re-architected our X-Fi processor so we can deliver even more performance and provide the best audio available on the PC today. You'll know why it's worth the upgrade to PCI Express the second you hear it. We've also added Dolby Digital encoding, for connection to a home theater system for an awesome gaming experience. We created an entirely
new I/O drive with an innovative design that can fit either a 3 ½" or 5 ¼" drive bay. Plus, the Sound Blaster Titanium series cards are optimized for Windows Vista with UAA-compliant hardware."
The PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series features Dolby Digital encoding, for single-cable connection to home theater systems. The card leverages the power of the X-Fi processor optimized for PCI Express to deliver accelerated audio for improved game performance, with ultra-realistic EAX 5.0 effects and 3D positional audio. Hardware-powered 3D positional audio and EAX 5.0 effects provide stunning positional audio realism over headphones and speakers, for a much more immersive gaming experience than any motherboard audio solution can offer. The Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series also vastly improves voice chat clarity in online games where collaboration is vital.
"With its superb audio fidelity, EAX 5.0 support, and 128 hardware-accelerated voices, the Sound Blaster X-Fi is simply the best way to experience the rich soundscape of Guild Wars. Gamers who really care about how their PCs sound should give it a serious listen," said James Boer, ArenaNet audio programmer and Game Audio Programming author.
The new PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion Series sound card includes all of the features of the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series, plus an internal I/O drive for quick front panel connection to headphones and headsets. This versatile internal I/O drive design offers the choice of placement in either a 3 ½" or 5 ¼" drive bay. The 3 ½" drive features mic-in and headphone-out connections. This drive slides inside the 5 ¼" drive, which adds RCA line-in connections.
The world's first native PCI Express hardware accelerated sound cards, the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series and PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Championship Series sound cards also feature:
- Creative X-Fi processor specifically designed for high-speed PCI Express slots in modern PCs
- X-Fi Crystalizer technology, which leverages audio algorithms to intelligently and selectively determine how to restore the highs and lows from sound effects, instruments and vocals and voices that were damaged or diminished during the MP3, AAC, game audio or other compression processes
- X-Fi CMSS-3D technology, to create virtual surround sound through speakers or headphones in games or music. In games, you hear your opponents in their exact location. With music, the sound expands so it completely surrounds you
- Dolby Digital support for compelling 5.1 surround sound through a home theater system
- Creative ALchemy to restore EAX and surround sound in DirectSound game titles running under Vista
- Certified UAA compliance for maximum Windows Vista compatibility
- X-RAM dedicated audio memory to boost performance in select games
- THX Certified surround sound for cinematic movie audio playback
- PowerDVD software with DTS-ES and Dolby Digital-EX decoding
- 24-bit audio quality and 109db SNR audio clarity
- ASIO recording support with latency as low as one millisecond with minimal CPU load
91 Comments on Creative Unveils X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Series PCI-E Sound Cards
I wouldnt mind this sound card as its a PCI-E 1x card.. and btw, non-coloured jacks are a big PIA.
Oh and most definately get an adaptor, thats how i've used my sennheisers for the last 5 years (HD-555 and HD-202)
NVidia is filthy rich now, it can very much afford to resurrect SoundStorm for discrete sound-cards ..... or even high-end PC chipsets.
HD audio/alzia...whatever was already speced out, nvidia saw a chance to "pull a fast one" on people.
And the xbx's video chip is just a gf3 with a die shrink in reality, just as the cpu is really just a p3/p3 celeron, i have a buddy thats got a BETA xbox thats got a 370 socket, he was able to toss in a 1.4gz celron tulitin(impressive perf boost!!!) also was able to up the ram to 512mb (it only had 2 memory slots.......), its a beta unit so its HUGE in comparison to the units they sold(that at the time where considered huge lol)
i have used very consol from that gen, the xbx was the best, the dreamcast would have pwned it had sega not been a bunch of tards and left out dvd playback and an HDD tho......
blah, consols suck.........*hugs his pc*
thanks for the info, and it is a pity it never returned.
IF nvidia had been smart they would have stuck with the orignal idea and included it on the chipset but also sold the standalone cards they had already designed, i have seen beta pci soundstorm audio cards, little buggy, but what do u expect they where beta hardware with beta driver support.....
wish nvidia would have gone that rout.
I have been hearing that AMD plans to add more DSP fetures to the cpu in the next few gen's, i been getting the impression that they would like to make it so the cpu had detocated hardware APU style support to compliment their HDMI audio thats already on their videochips, if true this could be a boon since it would also allow the use of soundstorm like setup where the external codec be it realtek or cmedia or ADI or whatever was just there as an external enterface
soundstorm was officialy mcp-t+realtek ac97 codec, some boards used cmedia chips with the mcp-t, those acctualy had better audio quility but you had to use drivers from the board maker OR install the audio codecs driver THEN the nvidia soundstorm drivers.
i have owned MANY boards and setup and tested many others, i honestly dont have a problem with any of the current HD audio chipsets in use as long as the drivers are updated properly by the chip maker OR the board maker in the case of ADI chipsets asus and intel use.
but then again most audio today is FAR diffrent from what many old skool comp geeks like us think of when we read/see "onboard sound", back in the day onboard was barly passable for use on uber crappy net machiens it aite cpu power like a mofo and sounded like a stock am/fm radio in a lowist of the low model ford festeveas, horrible horrible stuff.
now today we got MORE cpu power then is needed, and so called ac97/hdaudio codes are acctualy more powerfull in many cases then our high end soundcards of those days, Where this falls down is when you look at the drivers board makers put on the cd that comes with ur shiny new board, i just got a ta770 from biostar(kickass little board) its disk had drivers from b4 the board was even avalable.....i grabbed the current realtek drivers and installed hem and havent found any buggs since, but i know for a fact the older drivers sucked, because my last 2 boards have had realtek audio :P
oh, little note, if you have an OLD system thats using an old cmedia full on sound chip for its onboard and it sounds like crap, check if its the 8738, if so, check out cmedia's forums, i just recently updated the drivers on 2 old systems(1 hp one compaq), they where running 2k, so slaping in more ram and the new drivers made a world of diffrance, the old drivers sounded HORRIBLE, and the 4 and 6ch sound didnt work properly, after installing the new drivers the change is insain, you would honestly think you went from ac97 to sblive.....all from a driver update made for XP on a chip as old as the sblive........(btw, creative dumped the sblive driver support and thats when i stoped buying/using their products, i payed neerly 450usd for the sblive kit i have, sure that was years back, but i also have a cmedia based SIIG card that uses 8738 chip on it, it cost me 30bucks, and its got uptodate drivers.....that WORK......
I agree, though, we need much better competition in the audio market . . . at least competition has picked up near about 100% over the last 2 years. Sadly, the Auzentech Prelude is kinda looked upon as an extension of Creative's X-Fi line, and neither ASUS, Razer or HT Omega seem to have enough "go get 'em" attitude in the audio market.
Sure, the Xonar proves to be the single biggest threat to Creative - but it's not enough, IMO. Not enough to cause major change.
Wasnt it creative who said they'd never release a PCI-E card, due to higher latencies?
creative should *STOP* releasing product they cant make DRIVERS for
given the fact you have to PAY creative for drivers is kinda funny
and this is a copy of Asus D2X
it also have DTS Connect, Dolby Digital Live, PROPER EAX5 support (given the fact creative cant provide EAX in vista)
Let's not get into "oh yeah?.....blah blah blah". Let's acknowledge its a news thread and everything surrounds the product that's making news.
www.pcper.com/comments.php?nid=1480
:roll:
Xonar D2X has known incompatibility with even the newest nForce 600 upwards, due to the bridge chip used.
@ wiak ...
They emulate upto EAX5, not hardware supported... Drivers intercept EAX calls and emulates it to within a certain degree; slight differences and varied support in games.
Still thats quite a feat when creative ask anyone but X-Fi users to pay for a piece of code to intercept and translate EAX calls :(
I run alchemy on my auzentech card, if you search for alchemy universal you'll realise that hardware EAX isnt neccesary at all.