very few nvidia owners with SLI boards acctualy go SLI, i had a site with a survay, more CF board owners acctualy use the CF support then SLI chipset owners, probbly because many times to get a decent nvidia based board u gotta buy their higher chipsets, where as in most cases only ppl who want/plan to acctualy go CF buy the CF chipset boards.
and yes again creative FAILED TO PROPERLY TEST their designs, also the issue wasnt 100% fixed with the firmware and bios updates, it was just lessened in most peoples cases, they got it down to a level where it was "acceptable" or "passable" but still.....
i just find it funny that raid cards, scsi cards and any number of other devices that demand high bandwith over the pci/pci-e buss work FINE, but creatives very expencive cards had issues......
guess that shows how well they test their products b4 putting them in users hands........
I'll agree the cards needed further testing before release - but the X-Fi was designed from the ground-up, not recycling last gen chipsets like the Audigy and Live! series did.
most users who had issues with the nF4 and 5 series either ran SLI, or very specific nVidia cards - it was a bad design on nVidia's part, the chipset would ignore IRQ requests from other devices, to allow the video cards to keep access of the BUS; without the IRQ from the X-Fi being serviced, the APU kept buffering the audio and it would start to break up . . .
other issues from other boards which started up further down the road, where due to overheating of the APU (lack of testing on this is obvious, or they didn't intend there would be a problem). Early revisions didn't have a heatsink, and the higher temperatures put a strain on the APU itself over extended periods of time - after a long enough period of abuse, the capacitors started to break down, and started leaking, and just prior to that, you would start experiencing vast amounts of audio issues, usually in the form of SCP.
I can't blame Creative 100%, but they shouldn't had the foresight to at least slap a heatsink on them from the start just to be safe. They're not the only company that's run into issues with lack of adequeate, cooling, though . . .
and then there are the growing number of pre-built systems from the likes of all the big OEMs, and most of these have locked BIOSes for their motherboards. Depending on the motherboard, CPU, and the general SYS setup, PCI latency needs to be adjusted for the X-Fi cards . . . hell, PCI latency is something that has had to be adjusted for years and years, but, back in the day, the BIOS was open to users - cause you either knew what you were doing in BIOS, or you didn't so you left shit alone. As systems have become more and more pre-built, and more and more average users started purchasing systems, the BIOS had to be locked from features that could potentially damage hardware, and out the door PCI latency settings went.
Not really a problem, until you bring home an X-Fi, Audigy, or some other BUS hungry PCI device, and install it. Now you'll start running into hardware issues, as your new device won't work properly, especially under load. But you can't adjust the latency properly, as the OEM design wasn't meant to be 100% supportive of upgrades, and who takes the flak for the device not working correctly? The manufacturer of said device.
All I'm trying to say, is that yes, Creative should've put a little more effort into testing prior to initial X-Fi shipment; but for nearly almost all of the major problems people have complained about, it's nothing to do with the X-Fi but instead is typically caused by something else. The vast majority of users who've purchased the cards aren't as keen as the majority of us here, and that's where a lot of problems start to arise.
Creative's hardware is still great, but I'll full-out agree that their tech support and customer service are crap as of right now.
