Pci Express Sound Blaster X-fi Xtreme Audio Varpak

This page features a wealth of information related to

pci express sound blaster x-fi xtreme audio varpak

Product Image

Pci Express Sound Blaster X-fi Xtreme Audio Varpak

Device Type - Sound Blaster
Interface Type - PCI-E
Localization - English
- Recording: 24-bit/96kHz

List Price: $59.42
Lowest Price: $42.01

Product Description:

*VARPak* - Experiance truly great sound for your music and movies. The PCI Express Sound Blaster Xtreme Audio sound card features X-FI technology that makes your mp3s and other compressed music sound better than original CD. Watching movies on your PC will sound like youre in a room full of speakers!

Customer Reviews:

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-03
EASY INSTALL WITH X-P HOME
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

Rating:
Date: 2008-02-17
Deceived
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.

Rating:
Date: 2008-01-11
Decent Sound Card
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

Rating:
Date: 2007-12-24
Don't go for this
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.

Rating:
Date: 2007-11-16
Satisfied with product but not thrilled.
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.