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X-Fi and the Elite Pro: SoundBlaster's Return to Greatness

 by Derek Wilson on August 30, 2005 11:59 AM EST
110 Comments | Add A Comment
110 Comments

Performance and Quality: Game Tests

For these tests, we will be looking at RightMark 3DSound 2.0 and Battlefield 2. With the possibility of twice the number of voices supported by Audigy, we can't do a direct comparison at some points. However, we will see how much impact going from 62 to 127 voices can have.

Our test system included these components:

NVIDIA nForce 4 based motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55
1GB DDR400 2:2:2:8 RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
120GB Seagate 7200.7 HD

Our RightMark tests show that the Audigy 4 Pro uses less CPU power per setting than the X-Fi. This was a little confusing at first, but we have our thoughts on why this happens. It seems to make sense to us that the X-Fi driver is more complicated than the Audigy driver. We therefore see slightly lower performance from the X-Fi card. With the X-Fi being brand new, driver improvements could also change the performance picture over time.

This performance issue should be different on the higher end X-Fi cards with games that support X-RAM. Unfortunately, we can't test this yet as no games we looked at have this ability. Storing uncompressed audio and not needing to run an MP3 or Ogg decoder in the background would help to significantly lighten the CPU load on most games. Note also how CPU usage increases nearly linearly with the number of voices used.

RightMark 3DSound 2.0 No Sound

RightMark 3DSound 2.0 32 Buffers

RightMark 3DSound 2.0 60 Buffers

RightMark 3DSound 2.0 127 Buffers


For Battlefield 2, we ran our usual test at medium quality settings at 1024x768. The Ultra High quality option in Battlefield 2 is only accessible with an X-Fi card (which likely means it employs more than 62 voices). As we can see, BF2 performance is consistent with our RightMark numbers. The X-Fi gives us just a little lower performance than the Audigy. It is nice to see that going from High Quality to Ultra High Quality on the X-Fi doesn't incur a significant performance penalty though.

Battlefield 2 Performance No Sound

Battlefield 2 Performance High Quality

Battlefield 2 Performance Ultra High Quality

We'd really like to see such an expensive audio solution offer nearly equal performance compared to running without sound; at present, both the Audigy 4 Pro and X-Fi take a 15% peformance hit when switching to high quality audio. That may come with future titles and updated drivers, but for now the X-Fi is no better than the existing cards at reducing CPU overhead. Quantitatively, X-Fi should be the better card, and the 1% or less difference in CPU load isn't a big deal. In current games, it's tough to notice a difference.

Quantitative Analysis: RMAA 24-bit / 96 kHz Qualitative Analysis: Audio Listening
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  • NovaPolice - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link

    Yeah, I'm somewhat curious as to how the crystalizer does in comparison to Qsound's methods, Qsizzle, Qrumble, and Qexpander, which I have enjoyed for a while. Probably the best candidate for comparison would be the envy24(with-some-tricks)-based PSC724 Ultimate Edge. Of course.... that thing only costs 30 bucks at outpost, and philips is kinda bad at releasing drivers.

    I wish Qsound Labs would create some kind of hardware chip. Some kind of alternative to the various successions to EAX. Their expander kicks ass.

    Or it would be nice to see something with Creative's hardware power combined with Qsound's algorithms.

  • flexy - Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - link

    >>>
    i highly doubt it. Better save your money and invest in better speakers [if not already]..this is really all bunk. ALL they can sell is features and irrelevant addons/gadgets/specs...specs which are only relevant MAYBE for hardcore pro-musicians. But then i dont know any pro-musician who does his recordings on a creative card :)
    >>>

    Btw, i also highly, highly doubt that for listeining to music/mp3s etc. people will notice a difference (towards the better) with a VERY old AWE32/64 card compared to any of the newest cards out right now. I remember actually that years agomy AWE64 had this certain "punch" to her which i liked...and i cant even necessarely say that for listening to music my current Audigy2 is noticeable "better"...but then this is a long time ago :)

    Anyway...leave 'em the fun to sell their products with dumb marketing terms....and as stated elsewhere...hope that the OEM/lower end cards will be much cheaper. (For what it's worth)

  • Calin - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link

    I found also that my Creative Sound Blaster 16 (ISA card, with 2x4W amplifier on card) sounded more "musical" (let's say I consider it better sounding) than the newer Audigy 2 gamer

    Calin

  • Wellsoul2 - Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - link

    I went from SBLIVE to Chaintech VIAEnvy to Audigy 2 ZS.
    It would be nice to have a card good in games and music.
    Subjectively I think the Audigy 2 ZS better with MP3's and games than
    the Envy Card.

    Also I've found that the software makes a big difference.
    Anyone notice that Itunes free player sounds much better than Windows Media Player or
    Creative Player? (With any audio Card)

    I really liked the ViaEnvy sound but it really won't do games well.


  • flexy - Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - link

    i never use the creative software, neither do i use itunes.

    If i want to have highest quality sound then i use foobar2000 with kernel streaming or foobar/winamp with direct asio (plugin) output. I dont think there's anything better right now (in terms of player/output/quality)

  • Parak - Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - link

    Seconded, would love to see a matchup of this card versus Envy24 solutions.

  • imaheadcase - Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - link

    "Creative informed us that cards should be shipping as of last week, but we still can't find them online or in stores. Even Creative's own site lists the X-Fi line up as pre-order. We will have to check into the availability of these parts as we certainly don't want the recently ATI disease (“paperlaunchitis”) to spread to the rest of the computer industry. "

    Actully you can order it on creative site, I see you can do it as i type this. Also can purchase it at Best Buy, they have dozens of them on display. There are 3 online retailors that have it listed. Was this artical typed out a week ago or something? lol

    I will sum of this card for everyone: Wait a few months, and you can get it for a little over $50 for cheaper one. The high end card are pretty much same as cheaper one, you just get some extra CRAP with it. Pretty much %90 of the stuff on card is useless to the average user. This is essentially a Audigy 5 card...go go marketing from creative :P

  • HardwareD00d - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link

    I saw an X-Fi card in Best Buy last week (Phoenix AZ, US) Looked pretty neat and I had just heard of them, so I was surprised to see it on the shelf so soon.

  • missleman - Tuesday, August 30, 2005 - link

    All that mumbo jumbo doesn't look like it will have any real use for me.

  • HardwareD00d - Wednesday, August 31, 2005 - link

    Tom's Hardware seemed to really like this card. They were much more impressed by the sound than Anand was.

    http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050818/inde...">http://www.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050818/inde...
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