http://www.maximumpc.com | oct 08 | MAXIMUMPC |&.
deathmatch
And the Winner Is...
T
he X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty is the winner of this fight. The fact
that it works in nForce boards out of the box—hell, we even had
luck running it on a Vista 64-bit configuration with 8GB of RAM and
SLI!—makes us think that Creative is finally getting serious about
the driver complaints it has been receiving. We also think it’s worth
paying for true EAX 5.0 support over the Xonar DX’s faux EAX
support. That doesn’t mean the Xonar DX was beaten completely
senseless. It’s a good-sounding card and it’s more affordable than theX-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty. It’s also the only low-profile PCI-E sound-
card we know of. That makes it a good choice for home-theater PC
builders looking to improve on onboard audio. Of course, the real
question is whether it even makes sense to use PCI-E. We did see
slight performance degradation over standard PCI with both cards,
but we suspect that’s due to immature drivers. One thing you do get
with PCI-E is the ability to finally fill those appendix-like x1 PCI-E
slots that many motherboards have above the graphics slot.round 4
performance
With soundcards, performance refers to frame rates in games. The
theory is that if the CPu has to work harder to figure out all the math
for the audio algorithms, you get lower frame rates. In our tests, the
Xonar d2 was just slightly slower than the X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty,
which backs up what we’ve seen over the years: An onboard dSP,
such as the one in the X-Fi, used to be far superior to the host-based
audio of the Xonar d2, but it doesn’t seem to make the difference
it did when CPus were much slower. The real shocker was that we
found an older PCI-based X-Fi to be faster than both cards by a bit.
We’re not talking about huge differences, but for folks who thought
moving the soundcard to the über-fat PCI-E interface would pay
performance dividends, it doesn’t. At least not today.
WInnEr: TIECrEATIvE Sound BlASTEr X-FI
TITAnIum FATAl1Ty
$140, http://www.soundblaster.comround 5
audio qualiTy
Audio quality, like visual qual-
ity, can be subjective. For this
deathmatch, we listened to various
24-bit/96KHz audio samples using
high-quality in-ear buds and also
sampled various modern games
for 3d positioning. The Sound
Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty had
the edge, despite the Xonar dX’s
better paper specs. In games, the
Xonar dX sounded less brilliant
than the X-Fi and on occasion
crackled when the card’s GX gam-
ing mode was enabled.
WInnEr: X-FI TITAnIum FATAl1Tyround 3
feaTures
The two cards are pretty evenly matched in
features. Both are x1 PCI-E cards, both do
dolby digital live, and both have standard
front-panel headers. Additionally, each
offers excellent-sounding, high-quality
codecs (though the Xonar dX specs, on pa-
per at least, are superior). The X-Fi has the
advantage of offering both optical SPdIF-in
and -out ports, while the Xonar dX com-
bines the mic/line-in port with an optical
SPdIF-out port. The X-Fi also offers EAX
support—a feature the Xonar dX emulates
at questionable quality.
WInnEr: X-FI TITAnIum FATAl1Ty