Reviews about Creative X-Fi compatiblity problems

[Captain Crunch]

I know some of you have the xfi's and some still have the audgy zs.
And still some have went from the zs to xfi.
Iv read some post like this:
Pros: great sound !!! and console is cool...


Cons: very poor drivers. anyone with an asus board mine being an
"a8n-sli-prem" CANNOT launch
asus update to update their bios
it screws up bios ! also when you go to reinstall asus update
disk won't re... More »
cognize the board as being an asus mobo. I had to f/disk /mbr my drive and start from scratch without installing the sound card of course.I spoke to creative labs and they gave me a list of drivers to install
"in order" but I am kind of leary of doing so

I have the asus nforcer4 board.
So Im not wanting all the problems.
I have been looking for ways to improve my sound. As of now im running onboard sound with Asus sli Premium and some Logetich x530 spearkers.
I am considering going to the Logetich 5500s and a sound card but Iv been on several boards and it looks like the Xfi asus and the nforcer4 boards are not playing nice with each other.
I may be better going with the zs.
So I'm looking for advice from some guys I trust a little more, how may have some experance with this.
Have you had problems with your sound cards?
Any and all comments welcome.

[gvblake22]

The brand of the board probably won't make too much of a difference; it is all because of the nForce4 chipset.
The problem had something to do with the IRQ assignment and only the XtremeMusic and Platinum X-Fi cards. But I believe this issue has been resolved with a firmware update on the older cards. Any card you purchase today should ship with the latest firmware and compatable parts etc. If for some reason you get an older board or one that won't work correctly, you should be able to RMA it back to Creative pretty easily and they will send you a new, more recently revised board that should work.

I got the distinct pleasure of experiencing these driver/installation issues myself and it truly is a nightmare. But I believe all of the newer boards should be fixed and good to go...

[FZ1]

I haven't looked at it for a while but I thought the original Xi-Fi cards had some compatibility probs but the second generation cards had a fix in them? If you got a 1st generation card you could send it back to creative for a firmware update. I looked at this before I bought one. Works fine on my DFI NF4 board.

[Capper]

Yes I had a Generation 1 card, and when we tinkered with it we had all kinds of problems....When Blake went to the Generation 2 card it worked really well after some initial set-up issues