reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
66 MAXIMUMPC april 2007 april 2007 MAXIMUMPC 67
RazeR BaRRacuda ac-1
As we said with the Auzentech, we’re
impressed when companies go above and
beyond reference designs for products.
Razer’s Barracuda AC-1 is such a product.
Though it uses the same C-Media Oxygen
HD chip as the X-Meridian, you wouldn’t
think the two cards were related.
The AC-1 gives you a proprietary DVI-
like connector that you can directly connect
to the Razer’s HP-1 headset (or your stan-
dard speakers using the included dongle).
And like the X-Meridian, the AC-1 features
dual optical ports, but this card is definitely
intended for gaming. And that’s where it
gets interesting. The CMI8788 isn’t a DSP,
like the X-Fi, it’s more of a super I/O chip
that passes data from the PCI bus to the
various components on the AC-1 at a very
efficient clip.
Most of the filtering for 3D effects, includ-
ing Dolby and other processor-intensive
chores, is done on the computer’s CPU. In
FEAR, for example, the X-Fi’s DSP gives it
about a 10 percent frame-rate advantage over
the other cards in analog mode. (Dolby Digital
encoding adds even more overhead to the
Razer card, but the X-Fi is incapable of real-
time DD5.1 encoding.)
We’ve been wondering if our stance
against host-based audio was outdated in
the age of multicore CPUs, but a 10 percent
hit is still painful—it’s like dropping the CPU
down a rung or two.
Of course, the DSP doesn’t always
work against the AC-1. In 3DMark03, which
uses simpler audio routines, the AC-1 per-
forms the same as or better than the X-Fi.
Performance could also improve if the driv-
ers for the AC-1 were multithreaded.
In gaming fidelity, the AC-1 fared well in
our tests, with one exception. In Battlefield 2,
we noticed dropouts in audio. The same hap-
pened with the X-Meridian, so we suspect it’s
a problem with the chipset or its drivers thatis induced by the tremendous amount of
audio BF2 throws at you.
Where does that leave the AC-1? At $200,
it’s pretty expensive. In fact, the AC-1 costs
more than the X-Fi with its fancy schmancy
(and so far useless) onboard X-RAM. It
doesn’t help that the AC-1 lacks OpenAL sup-
port and sounds inferior to the Creative card
in many of the games we tested.cReative LaBs X-Fi
XtRemeGameR FataL1ty PRo
If you read our original review of the
X-Fi way back in November 2005, you
already know about this card. Back then,
Creative packaged this exact same card
with a drive bay and remote and charged
an impossible to justify $280 for the X-Fi
Fatal1ty FPS soundcard.
We ended up recommending its cheaper
sibling, the X-Fi XtremeMusic instead.
Fast-forward a year and a half, ditch the
remote and drive bay, and you’ve got the
XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series
priced at $130 less than the original. But does
the X-Fi age like a fine wine or a punch-drunk
palooka? For Creative, it’s pure vino!
Unlike the other two boards we tested
here, the X-Fi continues to use a true DSP with
“10,000 MIPS of power.” We don’t know how
true that 10K figure is, but in our tests, the X-Fi
remains the boss, especially when comparedto the CMI8788, which is nothing more than
a glorified I/O chip. In FEAR with graphics
options cranked down and audio options
cranked up to emphasize soundcard perfor-
mance, the X-Fi led by 10 percent across the
board. However, if C-Media ever releases mul-
tithreaded audio drivers, the day of the DSP
will likely fade.
Of course, a good soundcard isn’t just
about frame rates. In close listening using
reference-quality earphones, two Maximum
PC editors favored the X-Fi’s bottom-end push
while listening to a variety of 24-bit audio.
We also give the edge in gaming fidel-
ity to the X-Fi, as the subtle audio cues in
games (in particular, Battlefield 2) stood
out with this card. This may be due in part
to the developer-relations money Creative
spends to help developers utilize its tech-
nology. Most top games today support
Creative’s OpenAL initiative, which is the
only way to get hardware-accelerated posi-
tional audio in Microsoft Vista.
Although we think the X-Fi is the best
of the cards tested here for general PC use,
the real-time Dolby Digital encoding of the
two other cards and optical SPDIF make
them far better suited for home theater use.
We must also note that the now-defunct
XtremeMusic version of this card can still be
found and is a better value. But for gamers,
the X-Fi is the best choice.the Barracuda ac-1 features a proprietary dvi-like connector
that can be used with Razer’s multichannel headphones.$200, http://www.razerzone.comrazer barracuda ac-1the RutLes
Doesn’t include Creative’s
software bloat.the BeatLes^8
Five-volt keying makes the
card ineligible for PCI-X slots.the X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro series is essentially the
original two-year-old card without the extras.$150, http://www.creativelabs.comx-Fi xtremegamer Fatal1ty Promike BoLton
DSP gives it a performance
edge.michaeL BoLton^9
Pointless X-RAM.
MAXIMUMP
CKICKASS