Unlike Creative’s SB X-Fi, the Auzentech X-Meridian works fine with 4gb+ RAM
Just got me a new computer, went with 8GB RAM.
Felt sensible since it costs about as much as a day’s lunch. Put it in my Asus Maximus Formula, along with a Creative SB X-Fi ExtremeGamer.
Took the absolutely latest WinXP x64 drivers off Creative’s site, only over 1 year old.
Launched up Crysis and was greeted with most sounds missing and no 5.1 at all, some of the sounds from my front speakers were mirrored in the rear speakers though. Read up a bit on some forums, there I found the great info that Creative’s very fine drivers fail to work in 64-bit OS’es if you have 4GB RAM or more. It’s good to know Creative’s testing team has the right priorities. Making sure 4GB of RAM works in a OS that has as its main advantage access to more RAM should not be a priority. Oh, and it seems they have been feeling this way for over a year, because those threads were quite old… (I did pull out some RAM (2GB in total) and the sound in Crysis was then just as it should, perfect 5.1 positional).
But then I logged into Windows Update and found some drivers dated June 2007, so I installed those. Now I lost all 5.1 sound completely, even in Winamp I could only get Stereo, but at least they were WHQL certified, so I know the drivers must be well written and be of good coding practices up to Microsoft’s top notch standards.
Next I took out that very nice soundcard and put it someplace nice.
I then installed my X-Meridian, fired up Crysis with 6GB RAM installed (I haven’t gotten my mobo to POST with all 8GB, so that’s why). Wasn’t expecting much, but got perfect 5.1 positional sound. I don’t know if Crysis supports EAX or not, but it wasn’t something I noticed. I did notice the improved sound quality however.
But I did so more in Winamp, guess I had gotten used to the fine sound output by the Jamicon badcaps on the X-fi, oops, was that a typo? caps I meant…
Two days before you posted this up new driver for X-Fi was released that fixed 4GB bug in Vista.
Straight from Creative website creative.com/support/downloads
1. Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series Vista Driver 2.15.0004 (51.93 MB) 5 Nov 07
Fixes:
* Resolves an issue for Windows Vista 64-bit systems with 4 GB RAM
* Resolves loud speaker noise when restarting your computer
* Resolves an issue that causes OpenAL games not to respond
This download is a driver providing Microsoft® Windows Vista™ 64-bit and Windows Vista 32-bit support for Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ series of audio devices. For more details, read the rest of this web release note.
This download supports the following audio devices only:
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty®
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series
* Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
Current release features:
* X-Fi Crystalizer™
* X-Fi CMSS®-3D
* MIDI Playback
* EAX® Effects
* PCM stereo output through Optical Out
* Line-in connectivity
* SPDIF passthrough is supported on both Vista 32-bit and Vista 64-bit
* Recording capabilities
Rene
12 Dec 07 at 6:11 am
Rene; I’m sure that’s helpful to those that run Windows Vista, tho with a 63% performance reduction in Crysis I’m not exactly running towards that OS with my arms high in the air
As I said in my post I am running Windows XP x64
Per Hansson
13 Dec 07 at 12:32 pm
I had the some problem you described with xp x64 edition. There is actually a modded driver out there that will fix your eax and 5.1 support. If you are interested, email me and I’ll send it to you. Fixed all my issues.
JJ
13 Dec 07 at 3:07 pm
Hello!
I have the 4GB problem under Windows XP x64 with X-Fi Elite Pro, too. Please help me and send me the modded driver!
You could send it to tomtom007815@gmx.de
Thank you very much!
Yours sincerely
Thomas Keller
Thomas Keller
1 Mar 08 at 1:17 pm