Creative's X-Fi: A New Age in Sound Card Power?

More Powerful Than A PC, Continued

The new platform is also designed to adapt to all possible-use scenarios. It's also supposedly designed to accommodate future developments of motherboards and operating systems. Moreover, the X-Fi is not - unlike previous Creative products - linked only to the PC platform. Applications for consumer electronics are possible. In practical terms, the X-Fi circuit comprises 51.1 million transistors, is based on a 130 nm process and operates at 400 MHz.

The audio processing architecture in a conventional system is fixed.

With the X-Fi circuit, we've moved to a ring architecture, resulting in very flexible reconfiguration to suit each specific use.

The new 3D processing provided by X-Fi will deliver 3D sound with headphones as well as with a conventional stereo system, and obviously will adapt to a 5.1 or better system.

The mixing board, in "Creation" mode, bears no resemblance to the Windows one.

It has thus become a tool with impressive possibilities.