X-Fi Sound Cards
 

I'm in the mark et for a sound card and keep hearing good things about the Soundblaster X-Fi Sound Cards from Creative.

Does anyone have one of these sound cards, and if so, do you have any opinions on whether it's worth the money?

Thanks in advance.

I'd say yes, they're absolutely worth it, if you're going to use its capabilities. If not, then there's no need to fork over the extra cash. Here's a good breakdown of their benefits:

http://stage.tomshardware.com/2005/05/16/creative/

Is there really that much benefit instead of using the onboard sound on my motherboard? I have an asus p4p800 deluxe.

I'll be able to tell you in about a month.

Here's a link to the website so that you can decide based on how they advertise their hardware: X-Fi technology

If you are a medium to heavy duty gamer, yea. Otherwise, no.

I really don't understand what the difference is in sound cards. If it can decode the latest sound (be it 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, whatever) wouldn't the weakest link be whatever you're outputting the sound to (ie: the speakers)?

Some cards do sloppy jobs of processing the audio. Some don't support digital audio. The main thing IMO is that a good sound card will be totally independent and rely on the CPU just a tad.

Hell yeah! The onboard sound is so very basic on that motherboard (i have the same one!). You'll get a lot cleaner sound getting away from it. I will be upgrading mine soon. I compared a WAV file from my computer to the same file on my ipod, both run through a dedicated headphone amplifier to a pair of Sennheiser HD600 headphones. There really was a big difference, and the onboard sound was just blah. Also, there is better power supply to the chips on a sound card (as opposed to the power delivered to an onboard chip).

From the reviews I've read, the X-Fi is far superior to even the Audigy 2 and you can easily tell the difference on a decent set of speakers. It is simply heads above the competition in quality and performance.