Quote Originally Posted by Skerlnik View Post
The X-fi is a great sounding card. I always prefer a nice quality card to onboard audio. Yes it uses less CPU cycles (not really noticeable these days with these nice CPU's), but I don't think Creative's current Vista driver supports EAX 4.0 yet. Regardless, the card sounds crystal clear. I recommend picking one up.
Came across this yesterday:

Creative ALchemy Project allows you to run your favorite DirectSound3D games on Windows Vista as the developers intended - with full hardware accelerated 3D Audio and EAX support! This is done by translating DirectSound calls into OpenAL. In order for this to happen, a couple of files need to be installed into each game directory. This is handled automatically by the ALchemy installer - but can also be performed manually by advanced users.

Requirements:
- Windows Vista
- SB X-Fi * series soundcard with native OpenAL 1.1 Support * Excludes SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio


Download here: http://preview.creativelabs.com/alch...hemy%201.3.zip