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What's so wrong with Creative?

Forum CPU & Components : Sound Cards - What's so wrong with Creative?

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SaiyaJin   03-16-2003 at 09:07:48 PM

Ok, I keep reading how Creative sucks, stay away from Creative blah blah blah, but I've yet to read about WHY do you keep saying that. So what are the things that makes Creative such a bad company? No bashing just facts please.

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Teq   03-16-2003 at 10:57:13 PM
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A lot of the bad reports originate from a known incompatibility between older VIA chipsets and newer Creative cards. This can usually be cleared up by putting in the newest VIA 4 in 1 drivers.

Other than that... Creative make a perfectly fine product.


--->It ain't better if it don't work<---

Reply to Teq
skligmund   03-16-2003 at 11:34:27 PM
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somewhere in my post "CREATIVE: WHY!?!?!?!?!?!?" I replied to all the problems with CREATIVE that I have experienced, not including other known instances from freinds and family.

Most of them go on about CREATIVES inablility to create user-freindly drivers. Because of the terrible drivers, it is common to get hardware conflicts and resource hogging. Usually if you spend about and hour or two, you can get the sound card to work correctly, but I don't feel I should have to mess with a new card with new drivers and have to tweak them to get them to work correctly.

Sound cards aside, CREATIVE build 3rd class equipment. My CREATIVE CD-ROM that worked (kind of) for a very short period of time wasn't promising.
I had a video card (Savage4) that was a complete nightmare. Sometimes I would have to install it in another motherboard, uninstall it, and reinstall it in the original to it would post. Don't ask me what that was all about, I still don't know. Luckily, I was able to talk my friend into taking it off my hand (I GAVE it to him), but I think he still has it in a box somewhere.
Creative game plan in products is to build the cheapest thing they can and sell it for the most money possible, sacrificing quality wherever they can.
I have not owned one piece of CREATIVE hardware that I feel was acceptable. None were worth the money I wasted on it.

I am not bashing, I am stating facts about my EXPERIENCES with the product.

Then there is always the news, where CREATIVE buys out or goes through endless lawsuites, putting competition out of buisness (Aureal) because they know they make superior products.


Just look up some news at <A HREF="http://www.vortexofsound.com" target="_new">http://www.vortexofsound.com</A>


Water cooling is for the weak. Get liquid nitrogen.

Reply to skligmund
Twitch   03-17-2003 at 12:10:17 AM
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Well, unlike VIA, who has drawn the ire of those in-the-know because of both monopolistic business practices AND crappy product releases, Creative has mostly been crucified for the former. The most talked-about incompatabilities with Creative products were related to VIA chipsets--so who do you blame for that? I tend to think VIA is the ultimate evil.

Creative sued Aureal out of business, and then purchased all of Aureal's assets when Aureal declared bankruptcy. This is contemptible for two reasons:

1: It is anti-competitive, since it relies on the ability to of one competitor to buy more lawyers and has nothing to do with product quality, and;

2. Aureal's A3D was, generally, a better feature than Creative's EAX. Once Creative acquired the rights to A3D, A3D disappeared. That means we simply lost a pretty damned good technology.

I lost respect for Creative after that. The thing is, I am jaded and cynical, and I tend to think any company will do the same types of things once it has the power to do so. So it isn't so much that I think Creative is evil, as that businesses in general adopt "aggressive" business practices to the detriment of the free market. I don't despise Creative nearly as much as I despise VIA, who I believe actually takes a perverse pleasure at "giving it" to their customers.

<-----Insert witty sig line here.

Reply to Twitch
skligmund   03-17-2003 at 12:31:14 AM
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I have owned two VIA chip based motherboards, and I will admit that they are a nightmare and have too many bugs. But what they DO have is very high performance. My KT133E chipset is running my RAM at over 1050 MB/s bandwidth. That is highest for PC133 you will find.

As much as I dislike VIA, what other PC133 motherboard chipset options do I have?
SIS? poor performer
ALI? NOT! last good chipset they did was on the P5A
NVIDIA? Absolutely, but no PC133 compatibility (I'm cheap)
AMD? They also have their issues, and lesser performance.

If I were to buy my motherboard again, I would have gotten an AMD chipset, but I have this one now, and believe me, almost once a week I threaten to buy a new motherboard (even though I don't have a job as of right now, so it would be a serious misallocation of valuable resources).

As for CREATIVE, bugs and poor performance, it puts them in a worse book than VIA (at least in my way of thinking).

As for VIA now? They seem to have gotten their head on straight, not only do they have good performance, but their stability and bugs issues seem to be cured, mostly. If I wasn't going to buy an NFORCE2, I'd get KT400, even though I hate the VIA MOBO I have right now.

Water cooling is for the weak. Get liquid nitrogen.

Reply to skligmund
SaiyaJin   03-17-2003 at 12:35:52 AM
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Really? I always thought Creative were one of the best. Hmm that shows how much you can't judge a book for it's cover. So what kind of sound cards would you recomend? One with very high quality of course, and has all those bells and whistles like optical out and stuff like that.

Reply to SaiyaJin
skligmund   03-17-2003 at 12:41:16 AM
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Hercules, check them out, find what you want. I don't know the product line very well, but I hear more good then bad about them (as opposed to CREATIVE). There are plenty of other good cards out there, but I have no experience with them.

As for the audigy 2.... It may be a good deal, but after my experiences with CREATIVE, I wouldn't trust one with my money.

Water cooling is for the weak. Get liquid nitrogen.

Reply to skligmund
Teq   03-17-2003 at 05:07:22 AM
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Check out the Yamaha XG compatible cards... good price, nice card.


--->It ain't better if it don't work<---

Reply to Teq
TKH   03-17-2003 at 07:07:07 AM
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Technically Creative do produce good sound card, but in computer world there are many variable, most of us don't have identical system and that comes compatibility issues. Any my words are get yourself a cheap but good quality sound card, Turtle Beach, Phillips, Hercules, Creative etc. For sound quality, it all depends on your speaker. It is a waste of money if you bought the most expensive card and hook it onto a cheap $10 PC speaker. The best way is get a sound card with SPDIF output and hook it onto a decent speaker system.

My PC has gone to hell... because it's a killing machine...

Reply to TKH
SaiyaJin   03-17-2003 at 06:04:27 PM
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Yes I have an A/V receiver so that wouldn't be a problem.

Reply to SaiyaJin
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