To buy, or not to buy, that is this question.

[Lan]

I have an original Audigy Gamer Sound card. I has served me faithfully and still works just fine to this day.

Yesterday I bought 2142 Battlefield, and start reading the manual. I didn't see any 'minimum' for a sound card, but an "X-Fi" card was recamended for best sound.

I know that technically I don't need to upgrade, but a couple things have begun pointing out to me that I should think about finnally caving in and upgrading. First, driver support for Vista (I have Vista RC1) is going to be sketchy because of the new driver model that Creative is needing to use (found this out on the creative vista boards). Second, is this recomended hardware for the 2142 Battlefield, and third, it is an old card, and compared to the rest of my system, it is the most needed upgrade to bring everything to around the same level.

The thing is though, is that it works perfectly fine. No issues at all, and it runs my 5.1 creative speakers relatively nicely (I say relatively because I realize creative isn't the best speaker maker ).

What would you do in my position? Can I get some opinions to help me with my dilemma (sp?)?

 

[bacis]

hi.
you might have right about the question you ask.
but did you ask yourself if you would be able to notice the differnce
with the x-fi card in the same speakers?
or you think that if one think is recommend by an xxx company(game)or anyone else we should throw our correct hardware away and just to get it becausehas the option one game (for better performance.)
but if you have the money and want it go buy an x-fi card.
one think x-fi is superior to audigy.

 

[halcyon]

I have an original Audigy Gamer Sound card. I has served me faithfully and still works just fine to this day.

Yesterday I bought 2142 Battlefield, and start reading the manual. I didn't see any 'minimum' for a sound card, but an "X-Fi" card was recamended for best sound.

I know that technically I don't need to upgrade, but a couple things have begun pointing out to me that I should think about finnally caving in and upgrading. First, driver support for Vista (I have Vista RC1) is going to be sketchy because of the new driver model that Creative is needing to use (found this out on the creative vista boards). Second, is this recomended hardware for the 2142 Battlefield, and third, it is an old card, and compared to the rest of my system, it is the most needed upgrade to bring everything to around the same level.

The thing is though, is that it works perfectly fine. No issues at all, and it runs my 5.1 creative speakers relatively nicely (I say relatively because I realize creative isn't the best speaker maker ).

What would you do in my position? Can I get some opinions to help me with my dilemma (sp?)?

I believe BF 2142 is one of the games that exploits the X-Fi's X-RAM...so there would be a performance benefit from that standpoint. Also, the X-Fi support EAX 5...another factor that is supported in BF2142. This means 128 voices vs...64(?) of the Audigy 2....meaning more accurate positional audio for locating and dismembering virtual enemies. These are probably the reasons why the game makes note of the X-Fi. At $145 for an XtremeGamer FPS or $90 for an XtremeGamer standard its a noticable cost. Were I you, and able to spend at least $90 I'd upgrade because the X-Fi is not just strong for games, its specs are great for music as well:

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=209&subcategory=669&product=15854&nav=1

Those are respectable numbers and the X-Fi's gaming performance is currently class-leading.

If you want to wait a while you'll be fine, you still have a good card. However, if you're a gamer I think you'll want an X-Fi sooner or later, it's arguably the best gaming card there is.

 

[Lan]

I have an original Audigy Gamer Sound card. I has served me faithfully and still works just fine to this day.

Yesterday I bought 2142 Battlefield, and start reading the manual. I didn't see any 'minimum' for a sound card, but an "X-Fi" card was recamended for best sound.

I know that technically I don't need to upgrade, but a couple things have begun pointing out to me that I should think about finnally caving in and upgrading. First, driver support for Vista (I have Vista RC1) is going to be sketchy because of the new driver model that Creative is needing to use (found this out on the creative vista boards). Second, is this recomended hardware for the 2142 Battlefield, and third, it is an old card, and compared to the rest of my system, it is the most needed upgrade to bring everything to around the same level.

The thing is though, is that it works perfectly fine. No issues at all, and it runs my 5.1 creative speakers relatively nicely (I say relatively because I realize creative isn't the best speaker maker ).

What would you do in my position? Can I get some opinions to help me with my dilemma (sp?)?

I believe BF 2142 is one of the games that exploits the X-Fi's X-RAM...so there would be a performance benefit from that standpoint. Also, the X-Fi support EAX 5...another factor that is supported in BF2142. This means 128 voices vs...64(?) of the Audigy 2....meaning more accurate positional audio for locating and dismembering virtual enemies. These are probably the reasons why the game makes note of the X-Fi. At $145 for an XtremeGamer FPS or $90 for an XtremeGamer standard its a noticable cost. Were I you, and able to spend at least $90 I'd upgrade because the X-Fi is not just strong for games, its specs are great for music as well:

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=209&subcategory=669&product=15854&nav=1

Those are respectable numbers and the X-Fi's gaming performance is currently class-leading.

If you want to wait a while you'll be fine, you still have a good card. However, if you're a gamer I think you'll want an X-Fi sooner or later, it's arguably the best gaming card there is.


Thanks, but remember this is an ORIGINAL Audigy, NOT an Audigy 2... Would that make an upgrade almost mandatory in this case? Lets also not forget the new driver model in Vista.

Vista's new way of directly accessing resources on the hardware (in this case the sound card) has been totally removed. So support from Creative is a little behind on everything.

 

[halcyon]

Aaaah. Audigy...not Audigy 2. I had one of those...and Audigy Platinum...I recall paying $200 for it at the time. I don't think you should have any guilt about upgrading. Even though your card still sounds good. What? Do you expect it to fail or sound bad because its no longer new? I think you've gotten your $$ out of it. ...and you'll likely notice quite a difference between it and the newer generation.

I'm not trying to sell you an X-Fi. They're not perfect. Some users (out of the many-many trouble-free X-Fi owners) have experienced the Snap-Crackle-N-Pop noise ( http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=61926 ). They don't offer Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Live or DTS hardware decoding and only the newest X-Fi's come with software DD and DTS decoding. ...but the X-Fi is a good audio card, IMO. ...just don't waste $$ on the new Xtreme Audio. ...its the kiddy version.

 

[Lan]

Aaaah. Audigy...not Audigy 2. I had one of those...and Audigy Platinum...I recall paying $200 for it at the time. I don't think you should have any guilt about upgrading. Even though your card still sounds good. What? Do you expect it to fail or sound bad because its no longer new? I think you've gotten your $$ out of it. ...and you'll likely notice quite a difference between it and the newer generation.

I'm not trying to sell you an X-Fi. They're not perfect. Some users (out of the many-many trouble-free X-Fi owners) have experienced the Snap-Crackle-N-Pop noise ( http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&message.id=61926 ). They don't offer Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Live or DTS hardware decoding and only the newest X-Fi's come with software DD and DTS decoding. ...but the X-Fi is a good audio card, IMO. ...just don't waste $$ on the new Xtreme Audio. ...its the kiddy version.

No, I'm not expecting it to fail or anything. I think this is just a minor case of upgraditis and with this card being so old, it is finnaly nagging at me to get a new one.

So this is the one you are recomending? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16829102005

There aren't many reviews on Newegg about it, do you or anyone else have any info or reviews about it?

EDIT: I know you aren't trying to sell me one, it is just one of the best cards out right now. I'm still concerned about Vista compatability though. Basically Vista does not allow direct access of the hardware anymore (they weren't supposed to in XP, but they found a way around that). Now in Vista they need to go through a different access path that the OS access the device, and not the software/driver directly, and they can't take full advantage of the hardware acceleration that has made Creative's products so great. (link comming in a min or two)


EDIT #2: The following was taken from the creative support Vista Message Boards posted by one of the Creative representatives. http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=Vista&message.id=1694

3. The Vista audio architecture disables DirectSound 3D hardware acceleration; resulting in legacy DirectSound based EAX game titles not working as they did in XP.

Issues that may be encountered:
Could range from loss of EAX functionality in EAX enabled games to a complete game incompatibility, depending on how the game title was authored. This would only happen with games that render 3D audio using DirectSound, it should not affect games that render 3D audio using OpenAL.

(Note: There is a known bug due to a change to Vista which confuses an OpenAL component. A proper fix in progress, but a workaround is to copy c:\windows\system32\ct_oal.dll into the doom3 folder and rename it to OpenAL32.dll)


Status:
These issues cannot be addressed by the Creative audio driver, because the functionality was purposely removed by the operating system. We look forward to game titles moving away from DirectSound and toward OpenAL for fully optimized Creative 3D audio hardware and technology support.

 

[halcyon]

The XG FPS is a brand new card so there's reviews for it may be hard to locate, at least they were for me...haven't found any yet. The card looks to be an upgraded Fata1ity card with a newer APU.

Thanks for the useful links regarding Windows Vista compatibility, that's good info. I'm sure Creative will work around the issues. ...at least I hope they will.