Pci Express Sound Blaster X-fi Xtreme Audio Varpak

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...Read more

I purchased this card since my PCI card slots were taken up and the only open slot was an express 1 slot. I have had great experiences x-fi so this seemed like the perfect fit. If you have Vista... please read this review. Vista has been buggy but for the most part... most of my additions to my PC took well. The CD installed the drivers and Vista appeared to take to it but none of the software programs could be installed and the sound could not be manipulated. I could deal with that since the sound was crisp and clear just as I expected but the earphone jack did not work at all. It works on the speaker jack but does not sound very good. I attempted to load new drivers but could not find any for an express card and tried to download pci drivers which definitely didnt work. Luckily, the card works great for my needs and it was affordable but I was left out on a few extras the card offered.

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.