When it comes to professional game playing, people often wants a realistic sound effect. The realistic sound with correct audio channels and synchronization is useful when you are playing a first person shooting game, so that you can assess your enemyâs position or friendly tactics of your ally. Most of the games are coming with high definition audio. The inbuilt 2-channel audio chip of your motherboard often is not capable to handle the audio routes. Moreover, the current games are all multi channel, so having a two channel inbuilt chip cannot do any justice to the SFX of gaming environment. Therefore, you need to have a PCI sound card for the gaming. Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion surely comes as a top choice.
What’s it?
PCI express Sound Blaster is the next generation PCI based sound card that is among the favorite of top professional gamers. The X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty is a current addition among sound blaster PCI audio card. The PCI card is so powerful that it can distinguish your enemyâs footsteps even in ambience of rain. The X-RAM and accelerated audio cut off major load of sound from your VGA and RAM. The PCI card boasts of Realistic EAX 5.0 sound effect. The powerful chip gives an accurate representation of ambience noise of the game with very high accuracy.
The team gaming experience gets higher with enhanced voice chat capability. You can assess the intensity of blasts and explosions more accurately. Most of the current games are based on DirectX 11 onwards that is supported in Windows Vista onwards. The game card does recognize the Windows Vista OS apart from being able to run on Windows XP professional based system. The audio card offers an extra feature of X-RAM to give you an edge in Quake 4 gaming environment.
Key features
Several features make the PCI card Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion stand ahead of its competition. The following features will surely divert your attention to it:
1. High quality audio SFX performance.
2. ” EAX 5.0″ sound effects.
3. “Dolby Digital” support with easy access to the five channel sound system needing only single line cable.
4. Hardware acceleration based audio processing.
5. Compatible with “Windows XP” and “Windows Vista” based OS.
6. “EAX” sound restoration capability.
7. 3D Sound tracking for high performance gaming.
8.Real time voice chatting support.
9. ” X-RAM” for Quake 4 based 3D first person gaming environment.
10. Capability of switching in gaming features with easy to handle control panel X-Fi I/O drive fitted with backlighting for performance even in dark room gaming console.
11. Direct connection to both surround system and dual channel headphones.
12. Volume control for both 5 channel audio system and dual channel audio systems.
13. ASIO capable for high quality voice recording.
14. Xtreme Fidelity based technology for different formats of audio.
15. Capable to connect with DTS and Cyberlink Power DVD for enhanced cinematic experience.
16. Rear input for ease of operation and reduced wire clutter.
Whatâs innovative?
Numerous features make it a standalone in its category. The X-RAM based hardware acceleration is very useful for high performance requiring Quake 4 based games. The EAX 5.0 is very powerful for 3D first person shooting games scenario. However, for games like unreal tournament and counter strike, the high quality voice chat capability is very useful. The Panel-drive for volume control and switching on the gaming mode of PCI card makes it even lucrative among professional gamers.
Price and availability
The sound card was launched in May, 2008. However, it came to the market in later half of 2008. The PCI card can be bought for Rs 7000 or US$ 140. The PCI card can be bought from both computer hardware outlets and online hardware sellers.
The up side
The card is among the top products from Creative Labs that automatically makes it a credible choice. However, the high performance hardware acceleration makes it gaming easily. The Creative patent CMSS 3D technology can mimic the surround sound even when you are connected via dual channel headphones. The sound card is capable to play Cyberlink DVD player with DTS as well as Dolby Digital protocol.
The down side
The down side is that Creative has not come up with any upgrade of the sound card. It is still 3 years old and with current changes in gaming scenario it may get outdated within few more years. Secondly, older motherboards often do not support PCI cards. Even if they support one, the gamers prefer to use VGA card in them. However, newer motherboards have multiple PCI slots
Our experience
The Audio PCI card was tested with Quake 4 based high performance gaming environment and it passed with excellence. The on-board switch panel makes the work very easy. The counterstrike game with 8 on 8 teams experienced high quality real-time voice chat.
The bottom-line
If you are a professional gamer seeking a quality sound card, then it is the right choice for you.
