In my quest for hardware, I research something to death. I
want to make sure I am getting the most bang for my buck, but also being
somewhat frugal.
Now sure it is technology, and it's all a conspiracy...the
technology is really there hidden in some closet, but these manufacturers are
like drug dealers they give you a little bit at a time knowing you will be
back. So the questions come up: "Are these hard drives capable of doing 5
tera-bytes?" "Are these processors able to run a 999 jiga-watts?"
maybe.
Yeah, I guess I gave into them.
I was the first on the block with a 4x CD-writer, in
which I paid $400 and on top of that paying $2 per CD in bulk.
I was the first on the block to have a 17" monitor, paying
$780 (shhh don't tell my wife). That thing weighed like 100lbs. The box
wouldn't fit in my car so I had to leave the hatch open (in the winter time)
just to get it home.
I was the first on the block with a 3-piece speaker and
subwoofer, paying $200. I thought I really crazy at the
time.
My quest for better sound was a combination of BF2 patch 1.4
messing up my sounds and getting headphones. First was research on headphones.
Then after researching, figured my plain ole Audigy card wasn't cutting the
mustard. In an intense game like BF2, your processor is doing like 5-15%
processing of sounds. You can actually gain more FPS (frames per second) by
offloading the sound processing to a good sound card. BF2(and others) is
written to utilize the x-Fi features of a card. In looking for Creative Labs
history of sound cards, the evolution is tremendous as far as events and
voices processed.
My initial quick find/fix was to buy a Xtreme Music card, just
to be able to let BF2 use the features. Then I thought well the internal rack
would be cool to be able to hook up headphones to the front of the machine
easily, but the headphones I was looking at had 3-jacks(front,back,center/sub)
and the rack was pointless. Then I read where the card can handle much more if
it had it own RAM...so I went with the Fatal1ty.
4 Version of X-Fi
Xtreme Music - base card with nothing - on 9/06 $78 AR
Amazon
Platinum - base card, internal rack and remote - on 9/06
AR $128 Newegg
Fatal1ty - base card, internal rack and remote, 64meg x-ram -
on 9/06 $215 Newegg (price drop off 275)
Elite - base card, 64meg x-ram, mobo external box - didnt look
up b/c its over 350 (entirely too much for me)
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/10/31/creative_xfi/1.html
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi.html
http://www.guru3d.com/article/content/265/1/
http://reviews.cnet.com/Creative_Sound_Blaster_X_Fi_Xtreme_Music/4505-3022_7-31484388.html
