News: Creative Xi-Fi launched!

[saaya]

Creative launched their new Audio solution, the Xi-Fi chip today!

This all-new patent pending DSP architecture has 4 hardware threads, which why it is named the "Quartet" DSP

so its pretty much a quad core spu? :o

made in 130nm process
51.1M transistors
400Mhz clockspeed
10.340 MIPS theoretical overall processing power (equivalent to a P4 3.4Ghz)

creative claims it can improve the sound quality of all your mp3s and other encoded audio files by reconstructing how they probably sounded before they were encoded. nice feature! reminds me of de-interlacing on video



read all about Creatives Xi-Fi on Creatives Site
theres a nice discussion about Xi-Fi here
and dont forget to check out this sweet launch video!
according to vr-zone it will be available in august already

[pablo]

should be interesting lol

[Jester FPS]

If you're a gamer there is simply no other choice. Whatever audio card/solution you use today - prepare to throw it away! Whatever you thought was possible with audio in games - you are about to be amazed!

I can't wait

[DilTech]

So how much is this thing going to cost?...I run a sound studio out of my house, and it looks to be the PERFECT audio card for me!

[krille]

Yay! Just bought my SB Audigy 4 Pro $300 less than a month ago

No, really, what price it's going to be will depend on availability, that's the real quesiton here. For some reason I doubt we'll be seeing this in stores for some time. Moreover, they'll prolly cripple this thing (drivers/lasers/whatever) a lot before it reaches the end-user anyway, it's not like they don't want to be selling any upgrades/launch new products over the next decade.

[Playful_Buffalo]

how much power draw?

[saaya]

about the price, they keep mentioning that it wont cost too much, but considering their top solution costs 300$ i havemy doubts their idea of "low costs" fit our ideas of low costs

55M transistors in 130nm... that shouldnt be expensive... thats pretty much the amount of transistors of a geforce4ti or a radeon 8500, both were made in 150nm, and this is in 130nm, so the chip should be really small ie cheap, smaller than a tbredb core i think.
and 400mhz with 1.2v... i dont think it will run hot... the first chips will be clocked low and have parts disabled, they will probably increase the chip speed and enable extra parts bit by bit over the next years to be able to sell new top end products.

i think this chip will def need a heatsink, but i dont think it will need active cooling.

[saaya]

it will be available in august!
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=2243&s=1

[situman]

so that fatality ugly is going to promote the card when it launches or so vrzone states. doesn't that guy have a real job? BTW regular PCI or PCI-e?

[teqguy]

This is the reason I've been holding on to my Audigy Gamer for dear life and not springing for the Aud2 or Aud4.

Finally audiophiles can kiss the Emuk101 goodbye.

I'll finally be able to get the most out of my 7.2 surround sound setup.


And no, that Fatality guy doesn't have a real job. He's a 20-something year old "professional gamer" that would probably be living in his parents' basement playing QIII still if it weren't for this.

[iddqd]

Meh. Sound is way overrated.

[teqguy]

Meh. Sound is way overrated.

I'll buy you a set of earplugs and super glue then.

[_Eduard_]

Another core to the OC'ing list hehe...

CPU (x2 or more sometimes)
GPU (x2 or 4 sometimes)
PPU
APU
NB



I'll first wait for this muttha to get a lil cheaper, untill then I'll have to hold out with "only" my A2ZS.

[mesyn191]

Blah, did you have to post thier crappy CGI PR pics!?

Anyways this sounds nice and all but what about the drivers? Currnet drivers for current Creative sound cards suck, and they've got this stupid driver authentication driver system on thier website like someone is going to go and steal their drivers WTF?

Is there word on if it'll use PCIE or PCI yet?

[teqguy]

I'm assuming it'll be based on both PCI and PCIe, considering Creative wants this card to come out strong and compensate for the less than stellar Zen and Audigy 4 sales(for the record, the Zen makes the iPod look like a Fisher Price toy, but it simply doesn't get enough advertising).

They were planning on releasing a PCIe based card called the Sound Blaster Zenith in March, which is basically just an Audigy 2 on PCIe.

I guess they decided to hold off and wait for the X-Fi. Maybe they'll keep the Zenith name, though.

[R.Rabbit]

wtf?? so is it watercooled??

[saaya]

Blah, did you have to post thier crappy CGI PR pics!?

Anyways this sounds nice and all but what about the drivers? Currnet drivers for current Creative sound cards suck, and they've got this stupid driver authentication driver system on thier website like someone is going to go and steal their drivers WTF?

Is there word on if it'll use PCIE or PCI yet?

come on, the video looks sweet :P

wtf?? so is it watercooled??

who said that?

[teqguy]

wtf?? so is it watercooled??

Were you raised on picture books?


If you would've read the post instead of just looking at the pictures, you would find that they're just from the promotional video.

[aoc007]

PCI at launch, PCI-E later

[saratoga]

Hopefully this won't suck like every other creative card.

[Cyrilix]

Hopefully this won't suck like every other creative card.

Creative cards aren't known for supreme audio quality though. Most say that the Revolution 7.1 has better sound, although not as much support for games. Creative is sort of like a jack-of-all-trades. They dabble in a little bit of every market (in terms of sound).

[saaya]

there are better sound cards than creatives?
i thougt they had the best sound cards?

[DudeMiester]

No, the issue with creative's card is they use cheap DACs and their SRC sucks. However, they are extremely intent on solving the SRC issue now, and by the looks of it have in a very dramatic way. As for the DACs, well their Audigy 4 line has good ones, so you should be able to get good DACs if you know what to buy.

[saaya]

i got an audigy 2zs, is it worth to replace the dacs?
will i be able to hear a difference?
i have a creative 6.1 speaker set...
not worth it right?

[Skip]

so all i want is just this damn card, none of those breakout boxes with 50 audio INPUTS. all i want is the card dammit! which ought to make it cost around 100$ for just the card.