Pci Express Sound Blaster X-fi Xtreme Audio Varpak

Comment: I bought this sound card because I wanted to fill up the PCI express x1 slot on my motherboard, a micro ATX with fewer PCI slots on it, all slots on the board filled now. Not a single issue with this card, the fact that it is an OEM type "Varpak" doesn't create any issues. Creative drivers off the net work just perfect - - the sound is superb going through my Tritton 5.1 headphones, I don't use external speakers anymore - - I can hear more sounds with the headphones right on my ears. I had issues with internet Creative driver paks not matching the creative card a while back, but this card has no problems at all, delivering excellent quality for a lower price point. Buy it!

Comment: I too wanted to upgrade from my "tinny" onboard Realtech sound card. I opened up the side of my eMachines c3565 and found that the only
PCI slots I had left were PCIe x1 and PCIe x16. So this is the most moderately priced card I could find with the PCIex1 plugs. It came in a celophane bag with a Creative software disc in an envelope no other box both items were packed in the Amazon box with bubble bags

The bag had inprints on the side with the soldering connections and diodes so you could tell that some pressure was placed against it. I did my little "grounding myself to the chassis dance" and popped it right into the PCIex1 slot.buttoned her back up and threw the switch. My windows instantly recognized the hardware as it should but waited for me to install the CD before it would install it. So far everything is great.

I am limited in my audio review of the sound quality as I have yet to upgrade my speakers. I have always been happy with " Sound Blaster " in the past and if it doesn't sound as well as I expect, I'll come back and let you know

Comment: I bought this item primarily to upgrade from onboard sound, which doesn't support 3D or EAX features. IT was the only item in the box, but I wasn't surprised since it's OEM. I originally installed it on Vista Home Premium 32-bit. No driver CD came with it and the drivers from Creative's website DO NOT work. The program says no supported products can be found on your system. Eight hours of searching for drivers was enough to piss me off. I was finally able to use some from one of Gateway's installation programs, which was about 450 MB. I then proceeded to downgrade my OS from Vista to XP Media Center Edition 2005, because it has more networking support. I tried the method I originally used, the drivers from Gateway's site. It didn't work. I tried to manually add drivers through the Add Hardware Wizard from both an install CD ISO image and an extracted version of Creative's setup program. Device manager recognizes it as Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio, which is great; except it gets a code 10 error (cannot start). I am 95% sure I won't be able to get this to work with XP and am thinking about returning it, either to purchase an X-Fi Xtreme Gamer card or just settle for insufficient onboard audio. In short, be wary of buying this product. The only way to really know if it may work is if it comes with an OEM driver CD (mine didn't, so I am not 100% sure on this). If it doesn't come with a CD and you have XP, just send it back. Don't bother. If you have Vista, you might be able to scrape some OEM drivers from the installation programs of other name brand companies, i.e. Dell, HP, or Gateway.

Comment: Excellent sound quality...
Easy to use software
Fully working on Vista x64 with 5.1
Rainbow Six Vegas has never sounded better
Reasonable price

Doesn't speed up games...Uses CPU anyway...Can't use drivers from Creative's website with this OEM

Not sure what issues everyone's having with this card: just use the OEM drivers disk and auto-update and it even works on Vista x64 with all of my games in full 5.1 glory

Comment: The product came without a driver CD. I found issues getting it to work with Windwos Vista 32 and 64 bit versions. Though the output was good for a while. the product caused frequent hanging of the system with "sound freeze". No XP drivers were available. Hence the product is not of use to me so far. I am searching frequently for driver updates since I bought this product no luck for the last 6 months.