The EAX gaming enhancements are gone, however, in favor of the more usable Crystallizer and CMSS3D functions. This card has many aspects in common with existing X-FI designs and a few new features and modifications to appeal to the newer crop of demanding soundcards enthusiasts.īordering on false advertisement, Creative's latest X-Fi isn't an X-Fi at all, it's a new rev of the Audigy series using the X-Fi drivers and gliding on the PCI Express bus. It is small, light-weight and doesn't look half bad either. The exact operation of the X-Fi DSP is a bit outside the scope of this review but we would recommend you read up on this chip if you are planning on buying a card that utilizes it.Īrmed with a small sub and two satellite speakers we'll today have a look at Creative Sound BlasterX Kratos S3 speaker kit. It should also be noted that games using the OpenAL audio routines will use X-Ram by default.
Newer cards and X-RAM were aimed at allowing game houses to use high quality samples by using the X-RAM for buffering, caching, storage or pre-decoding. Games actually started using lower quality samples and heavy compressions because the audio hardware did not have the power to use high quality samples. The X-Ram can perform any number of features from allowing the DSP to decode compressed audio or acts as a cache or storage for in game sounds. X-Ram, There seems to be a great deal of misconception regarding the function of X-Ram and if it is even used in games. We have, the SRC engine, Tank, Filter, mixer and DSP. The X-Fi DSP, is built on the ring architecture with 4096 audio channels which is further broken down into 5 internal units along the ring. The 20KX series DSP also known as the X-Fi Processor easily has to be one of the most powerful digital signal processors ever seen on any soundcard.
We need to take a closer look though and see what we are paying for here. In the next section, we will attempt to give you a better idea of what the individual components offer and a brief note about their quality.įrom a design and electronics point of view that is some nice audio tech. This is mainly due to the component choices made by the cards designers. Soundcards can look very similar to each other but can sound drastically different. We have always added these sections to our reviews to help people understand what they are buying when they slap down their hard earned audio dollars.
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