WASTE OF MONEY, as even a 2 million dollar sound blaster cards are EXACTLY the same as onboard sound cards.

Not exactly true, groove. Onboard sound often suffers from a great deal of interference, and are usually not good at offloading cycles from the CPU. Only on rare occasion (the original nforce 2, Via Envy) do you find well-rounded onboard sound. With that said, this particular card isn't worth the money.

I agree completely with #2. Onboard sound cards do suffer from interference. Additionally, all the X-Fi sound cards have the crystallizer that makes mp3's sound more like CD quality. Also, sound quality in games is much higher with a sound card like this.

But, instead of getting this card, get the cheaper Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer (not fatal1ty). It has most of the same features as this card, for half the price.

It is better to spend this money on a better video card or something, better sound is not that noticable.

#4 what the burp are you on? Better sound is one of the most noticeable things, relatively.

I've hated Creative ever since they nefariously forced Aureal into bankruptcy, bought their assets, and then refused to continue any support for the vastly superior A3D technology.

if A3D were "vastly superior," the company wouldn't have gone bankrupt.

regardless, this card isn't worth the money. it has 64mb of x-ram which pretty much no game (except battlefield) supports.
the regular x-fi xtremegamers (non-fatality pros) go on sale for about $60 once in a while (there was a deal 2 weeks ago for $60 AR from circuit city). for these xtremegamer fatality pros, you're basically paying an extra $40 for 64mb of useless x-ram and a couple of more inputs.

if that's worth it to you, then use the coupon code "ONCAMPUS" for free shipping from compusa. and don't forget, if you have a compusa in your state, you will be charged tax.

Your ignorance and imbecility is most amusing, #7.

The reason why Aureal went bankrupt was because Creative filed baseless patent infringement lawsuits against them. Aureal counter-sued, and won... but the financial toll from all of Creative's aggressive but phony litigation caused them to go out of business.

Creative is nothing but a bunch of scum sucking bastards, and if you buy any of their products then you might as well allow someone to take a huge baconnaise in your mouth.

don't you usually include legal fees when you counter sue someone? don't people go to jail for doing this sort of thing?

If A3D were so good, they would have had money to pay for their lawyers.

damn this is pretty expensive. Does the speaker or the card play a bigger role.

#10: A3D was a better technology. It actually used the game environment(walls, floors) to simulate the actual echo of noises in the game world. It produced holophonic output that could use headphones, stereo speakers, or quadrophonic speakers to simulate full surround sound, generated real time. Just because they had a better technology doesn't mean that they also had a lot of money.

#11: well, both play a role. However, you can get some decent headphones that don't cost too much, and you'll definitely be able to hear a benefit to using this sound card, if you're gaming or listening to mp3's. However, like I said above, get the X-Fi Xtreme gamer (not the fatal1ty edition). It costs half as much, and has almost the same features. Same sound quality also.

thanks #12