Anybody with ASUS A8N-SLI Prmium and Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum?

[zenTera]

Hi all,

me again, still thinking about my new rig to come soon.

I just ordered the above mentioned board and wanted to get the X-Fi Platinum, too. My dealer told me not to buy it as the soundcard has serious problems witn nForce4 motherboards (which the ASUS is). I also found many reports on the creative forum that made me really scared.

Is anybody of you using the configuration above? If so, is it working for you the way it's supposed to be? Which BIOS version and chip driver version do you use then or what did you do to get the card running?

I'd really like the X-Fi Platinum in my new rig, must be really good if it works, but at the moment there seems to be no way to go. ASUS blames Creative and vice versa.

Tom

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

monnierock has them, the premium is only slightly different than the deluxe, the main differences are, the sli selector card is no there anymore, to turn on sli you do it via the bios with the premium, and also instead of a chipset fan, you get a heatpipe instead. thats the only 2 differences that i am aware of, even the bios is the same apart from that you have 1 or 2 options more for the sli as its in your bios where sli is configured by a pcb on my mobo.

 

Altough creative is the sound cards to get, they are dogged by problems from the audigy series onwards. its to do with there crap drivers, i cant say about the xfi, but i am hearing problems about them to. but basically, you have got a real good mobo.

 

asus are right to blame creative, as it is a creative problem.

 

goodluck on your decision, btw there is no real difference between the best audigy and the xfi. its a gimmick, as no soundcard can restore a bad mp3 or whatever to its original quality like creative claim, its impossible, all they do is run it threw a few filters which make it sound better but not restore it to its original quality.

So basically if i was you i wouldnt waste money on a really dear soundcard that you wouldnt notice the difference in sound quality.

 

but if you got the cash and want it, then by all means go for it, but as far as i am aware, only 1 game supports it, and thats bf2.

[Guest ruggbutt]

The new drivers work great in my Audigy2 ZS Gamer. I asked the guys who built my rig if I should go for the X-Fi. They said unless you're mixing down music with your rig then you're wasting your money. I love those guys cuz they tell you how it is instead of trying to sell you hardware. I'm using the new SB Beta drivers and they rock.

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

ya, i use the betas aswell, the others all made my pc crash lockup bluescreen etc etc, and it did my head in, but i will say the betas are a lot more stable than the cd and other drivers. i use audigy 2zs if it matters. i agree with the logic on the xfi, no need for it unless you are a music producer etc etc.

[Dronas]

ASUS A8N SLi + Creative Audigy = All Ok ;)

 

But chipset fun ( ~9000 RPM :))... Asus send new funs for users, but in Russia i shud come to service :(

 

P.S. - sorry for english.

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

i got a spare fan, brand new asus a8n sli deluxe fan, the new type if you want i can send it to you ?

 

it runs at 5000rpm, cuz i got 3 when i phoned asus, i phoned em 3 times and gave them 3 different address's, so i got 3 new fans :D

 

its a real nice looking fan replacement, and as i say it runs at 5400rpm max, and is a lot lot better and quieter than the 9-10,000 rpm fan that i have had to replace.

 

its brand new, and never ben used, i have 2 left as i only had to use one.

if you want i can ship to you for free. pm me or leave a post here if interested.

 

I am only doing this since its hard for you to get a fan from asus. they sent me 3 and i got them 2 days later :D

[Dronas]

i got a spare fan, brand new asus a8n sli deluxe fan, the new type if you want i can sens it to you ?

 

it runs at 5000rpm, cuz i got 3 when i phoned asus, i phoned em 3 times and gave them 3 different address's, so i got 3 new fans :D

 

:) Thank's, but i find tempolary exit (rheostat)

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

rgr, well if you change your mind, just pm me, as the new fan is a lot better and nicer, it cools a lot better aswell.

 

if you change your mind, just get in touch.

 

btw, i had 4 of your type fans, and everyone of them died before they were 2 months old. so i presume yours will die also, asus know its faulty fans and thats why the replace for free.

[zenTera]

Yep, in another thread MonnieRock already told me he has them working, besides the auto-update of the BIOS not working any longer. Just wanted to get a clue if somebody else has this config running, because most people seem to fail here. Creative used to update the firmware some time ago if you returned the card to them. But it's pain in the a** buying a "cheap" card and sending it back to the manufacturer before you can use it. Ok, somehow I'm insane: instead of deciding not to buy a crappy card from a manufacturer without too much customer-care, I just hope they'll fix the problem soon, be it Creative or ASUS. I want that (Platinum) card, especially 'cause of the drive it has got. I could integrate it in the tower instead of having to crawl behind the computer or having another external device on my desk. I could plug in the phones and my guitar from the front, could change volume with a turn of a knob and so on. Think there was the like with the Audigy 2 or 4, but it seems they are off the market since the introduction of the X-Fi. And yes, I'm not a serious "producer", but I would like to use music programs with drums and bass patterns e.g. and play and record my guitar simultaneously. With my onboard sound this is not possible due to a much too big latency. The X-Fi with ASIO should work fine here (at least I hope so).

BTW:Seems I've got my XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512 :p Today our postman tried to deliver a package and collect a lot of money while I was on work; this can only be the Beast. Gonna fetch it from the post office tomorrow evening and bring it to my computer dealer. Hopefully they received all the other missing parts in the meantime and maybe the weekend will see the first flight on my new machine:rolleyes: ...but with onboard sound instead of X-Fi:(

[Guest ruggbutt]

There's an auto update feature for Creative like their is for Windows. Just go to their website.

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

Yep, in another thread MonnieRock already told me he has them working, besides the auto-update of the BIOS not working any longer. Just wanted to get a clue if somebody else has this config running, because most people seem to fail here. Creative used to update the firmware some time ago if you returned the card to them. But it's pain in the a** buying a "cheap" card and sending it back to the manufacturer before you can use it. Ok, somehow I'm insane: instead of deciding not to buy a crappy card from a manufacturer without too much customer-care, I just hope they'll fix the problem soon, be it Creative or ASUS. I want that (Platinum) card, especially 'cause of the drive it has got. I could integrate it in the tower instead of having to crawl behind the computer or having another external device on my desk. I could plug in the phones and my guitar from the front, could change volume with a turn of a knob and so on. Think there was the like with the Audigy 2 or 4, but it seems they are off the market since the introduction of the X-Fi. And yes, I'm not a serious "producer", but I would like to use music programs with drums and bass patterns e.g. and play and record my guitar simultaneously. With my onboard sound this is not possible due to a much too big latency. The X-Fi with ASIO should work fine here (at least I hope so).

BTW:Seems I've got my XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512 :p Today our postman tried to deliver a package and collect a lot of money while I was on work; this can only be the Beast. Gonna fetch it from the post office tomorrow evening and bring it to my computer dealer. Hopefully they received all the other missing parts in the meantime and maybe the weekend will see the first flight on my new machine:rolleyes: ...but with onboard sound instead of X-Fi:(

 

 

omg dude, you got one already, u hax, i r sad.

 

if you got time take a few pics of it cuz i would love to see one in an actual setup. I hope it performs as good as they say it does.

 

good going getting one of them, once you have messed withit for a few days/weeks, you should do a little review, saying how good it is, good points and bad points, benchmarks etc etc, i would love to see a review of someone who has got that card instead of reviews from a website.

 

if you can cool, if not dont worry about it.

 

goodluck with your new hardware anyways, you will surely love it ;)

[MonnieRock]

zenTera,

 

I am a musician as well that plays multiple instruments. I suggest another solution for your sound interface if you can. When it come to playing back multiple tracks of wav audio and playing in realtime, soundblaster can not cut the mustard. Especially at high sample rates. Use soundblasters just for gaming and your system sounds.

 

I moved to this device which is a firewire interface and never looked back. They have great support and winXP64 drivers out

 

http://www.rme-audio.com/english/firewire/ff800.htm

 

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

mr rock is correctamundo, for gameing and system sounds only, if you want to do a little producing then i suppose it would be ok, but as mr rock says, it wouldnt cut the mustard for professional sound engineers.

 

if your a pro, get a different interface, if its just for laughs then the x-fi will do, hell even the audigy series will be ok.

 

basically, i have seen a few posts by monnie about sound matters, and i for one would take his advice for sound related stuff anytime, cuz i know he knows what he is talking about.

 

at times i have problems with teamspeak, so all the tech sound stuff, is way way beyond me :D

[zenTera]

Wow, that fireface seems to rock, but it's way too much for me. I won't do any professional recording, it's just that - if I have an idea at home - I could build a simple drum pattern, record a bassline and then plug my guitar in and play my part and record it. So I could easily present my ideas to my band next time we practice, and they would know how I want the song to be. Guess the X-Fi would be fine for that. It's supposed to have a very small latency, and that's what I still want to have. I hate to beat the strings and hear the sound only half a second later.

And: YEES! The package was my XFX card. Picked it up today and immediately brought it to my pc-dealer to build it into my rig. Hell, still two ridiculous parts missing (cardreader and floppy). Hope they get the parts tomorrow and I receive my machine before the weekend. I will do some testing and give you a feedback - after I installed everything properly and dried my pants;) But please don't expect it to be too soon. Got a lot of work atm, and when I get my machine I will surely use most of my spare time not to do any benchmarks but to play LockOn:rolleyes:

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

no worries dude, you go play with it first, take your time and get to know every inch of her before you give us feedback ;)

 

i r real jealous that you got the 512. but i still pwn ya with my sli 256s :D

 

btw my 2 512s are the xfx ones as well, i am not sure if its the standard xfx or the xxx edition yet. they couldnt say. but either will do for me.

[DayGlow]

Running with an A8N-sli Deluxe and a Xfi card myself and have zero issues. What's supposed to be the problem?

 

Also I have found there is a huge difference from my Audigy 1 to the Xfi. Directional 3d sound is way better.

[zenTera]

Running with an A8N-sli Deluxe and a Xfi card myself and have zero issues. What's supposed to be the problem?

 

Also I have found there is a huge difference from my Audigy 1 to the Xfi. Directional 3d sound is way better.

 

The problem is, that the card is not working properly with boards that have nForce4 chipsets. It is sometimes not recognized by the system. Sometimes people say they have multiple "unknown devices" in the system after a coldboot. Furthermore the autoupdate with the ASUS board will no longer work; autoupdate will tell you that you've got no ASUS board. Only things I heard, couldn't reproduce myself because I don't have the X-Fi. But look over at Creative's forum, there's a thread about that problem with about 350 postings (and still no solution:icon_evil ).

Which card do you have and when did you buy it? Problem is supposed to happen with Extreme Music and Platinum Edition, not with Fatal1ty and I don't know which other one (the real expensive ones, they have that special X-RAM or so?). Maybe you've got one of theses top cards or you've got one of the newest where Creative has maybe updated the firmware of the card (they used to flash the firmware for you to get the card to work with nForce4 boards)?

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

To be honest, i think the majority of stuff on creatives cards are gimmicks.

 

EAX for example, now nvidia had a real good sound card built into older nforce2 motherboards, but they abandoned it ages ago, but that was a real good sound and at the time pwnd or stood shoulder to shoulder with the best creative could offer.

 

Me personally, i dont like creative stuff, the whole audigy series of cards were all messed up, most of the problems were driver related. The betas work good for me know, the original drivers did not.

The main reason I dont like creative, is its very very very poor customer service, and the retarded people who work there

 

to Dayglow, the audigy 1 was a poor card, you will find a huge difference in sound with the x-fi, even the audigy 2 and 2zs you would of noticed a huge difference.

 

My buddy has the x-fi, and to be honest, I personally cannot tell the difference between the x-fi and my audigy 2s sound quality? go figure

[DayGlow]

use headphones with the X-fi, the 3d positioning is way ahead of what he Audigy could do.

 

As for my Audigy 1 vs the 2 the only difference is speaker support and better DACs. It still used the same sound engine and I was running the latest beta drivers. I got all the HD effects available to the cards.

 

As for the Asus problem, I do have the Windows bios installer unable to reconize the board, but I am still able to update the bios from dos, so it isn't a complete loss. Everything else is working as it should.

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

which version you got of the x-fi again ? the one with 64mb ? and if so, do you think it is worth its money, as the ones with 64mb are dear as f00k,

 

my audigy 2zs, pwns my old audigy for everything, basically i liked the audigy that i had a couple years back for about 1 month, then i went santa cruz and that was way way much better, but it didnt have eax, but i thought the sound quality was a lot crisper than the audigy, then my 2zs came along and pwnd that, so i would say that the audigy 2zs is far far better than the vanilla audigy.

[DayGlow]

No, I bought the baseline card, the Extreme Music or whatever it's called. The memory is useless right now. In the future it may become something, then I will move this card to my HTPC and buy the new Xfi for my main computer.

 

I have no doubt the audio quality of the Audigy 2 is comparable to the Xfi and is way ahead of my original Audigy, but the positional engine in the Audigy 2 is the same as the Audigy, and that the Xfi is much better at.