Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Gamer

Verdict: The X-Fi returns, slimmer and cheaper

Modern motherboard audio is so good that many people don't bother with a dedicated sound card. In an effort to keep the sound card market healthy, Creative is sprucing up its X-Fi range with two new cards, the £30 X-Fi Xtreme Audio and the £56 X-Fi Xtreme Gamer.

The current Elite-listed X-Fi Xtreme Music, is being retired, and replaced by the Xtreme Gamer. This new card includes all the core features of the Xtreme Music card, with a couple of neat new touches thrown in, such as the media PC-friendly half-height PCB.

So what else has changed? The internal connector for attaching the Fatal1ty X-Fi front panel has gone, as has the port on the backplate that allowed the card to connect to an external breakout box. The three analogue surround-sound connections remain, along with a fourth 3.5mm FlexiJack, which can output an optical digital signal, although you'll need to buy a TOSLink to mini TOSLink adaptor for your S/PDIF cable to fit. Unlike the Bluegears b-Enspirer, the X-Fi lacks the ability to encode DTS or a Dolby Digital signal, so unless you're watching DVDs, you'll only receive stereo sound over this optical link. As ever, Creative's design demonstrates a preference for PC-style analogue connections, rather than hi-fi standards such as S/PDIF.

While the new Xtreme Gamer can't connect to any of the existing X-Fi breakouts, it now sports an Intel HD Audio-compatible front-panel connection on the PCB, so you can use your case's front microphone and headphone sockets.

Apart from these changes, however, all the important elements of the Xtreme Music remain intact. Chief among these is the Crystalizer, a real-time audio processing feature designed to make audio (particularly MP3s) sound better. The Crystalizer concentrates on high and low frequencies, which suffer most from heavy MP3 compression, and boosts them in an attempt to restore the dynamism to the original CD recording and give the impression of greater dynamic range. It works remarkably well; the effect on MP3s is brilliant. It works especially well with non-amplified instruments such as the piano and acoustic guitar, which sound much richer and more detailed with the Crystalizer enabled; switch it off and they instantly sound flat. However, if you record your CDs using a higher-quality audio format, you'll notice much less of a benefit, and may even prefer the sound with the Crystalizer turned off.

If you're more of a gaming nut than a music buff, you'll be pleased to hear that the Xtreme Gamer, as the name suggests, offers all the Creative-only gaming features that we've come to know and expect. Games such as Battlefield 2 sound fine in EAX 2.0 mode, the highest EAX mode that non-Creative audio can support, but the Xtreme Gamer takes things much further; it offers support for all the EAX modes up to the latest and greatest one, EAX HD, which adds lots of neat tricks to provide a more immersive audio experience. When playing BF2 with this mode enabled, you'll find it difficult not to instinctively duck your head the first time you hear a jet roar overhead.

The Xtreme Gamer supports the latest version of Creative's CMSS 3D headphone software, which creates 'virtual speakers'; this basically fools your ears into thinking that they're hearing sounds from multiple directions, rather than just the two speakers in your headphones. While the sound placement isn't as precise as an actual surround-sound system, it will still give you an edge over competitors who are listening to the game in stereo, since they may find it more difficult to place footsteps or unseen gunfire so precisely on the map.

The other new X-Fi card, the Xtreme Audio card, features the Crystalizer and CMSS 3D headphone abilities of the Xtreme Gamer but, unlike the Xtreme Gamer, it requires an additional digital I/O module to provide an optical S/PDIF output. Plus, as it's a cheaper card, it isn't able to accelerate EAX effects in hardware.

Conclusion

The Xtreme Gamer is similar to the much-loved Xtreme Music card, but boasts some subtle improvements. The smaller PCB is great for media PCs and the Intel HD Audio-compatible front-panel header is welcome too. The X-Fi chip itself still has a lot of attractive features, which is a good job, considering the stiff competition it faces from apathy. In games, the CMSS 3D headphone features, and luxurious EAX HD effects in compatible games such as Battlefield 2142 and Medieval II: Total War are excellent, but for us, it's the Crystalizer that's the killer feature. The X-Fi does a great job of sprucing up the sound of MP3 music, and for gaming too,the Xtreme Gamer doesn't disappoint.

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