If you read our original review of the X-Fi way back in November 2005, you already know about this card. Back then, Creative packaged this exact same card with a drive bay and remote and charged an impossible to justify $280 for the X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS soundcard.

We ended up recommending its cheaper sibling, the X-Fi XtremeMusic instead.

Fast-forward a year and a half, ditch the remote and drive bay, and you’ve got the XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional Series priced at $130 less than the original. But does the X-Fi age like a fine wine or a punch-drunk palooka? For Creative, it’s pure vino!

Unlike the other two boards we tested here, the X-Fi continues to use a true DSP with “10,000 MIPS of power.” We don’t know how true that 10K figure is, but in our tests, the X-Fi remains the boss, especially when compared to the CMI8788, which is nothing more than a glorified I/O chip. In FEAR with graphics options cranked down and audio options cranked up to emphasize soundcard performance, the X-Fi led by 10 percent across the board. However, if C-Media ever releases multithreaded audio drivers, the day of the DSP will likely fade.

Of course, a good soundcard isn’t just about frame rates. In close listening using reference-quality earphones, two Maximum PC editors favored the X-Fi’s bottom-end push while listening to a variety of 24-bit audio.

We also give the edge in gaming fidelity to the X-Fi, as the subtle audio cues in games (in particular, Battlefield 2) stood out with this card. This may be due in part to the developer-relations money Creative spends to help developers utilize its technology. Most top games today support Creative’s OpenAL initiative, which is the only way to get hardware-accelerated positional audio in Microsoft Vista.

Although we think the X-Fi is the best of the cards tested here for general PC use, the real-time Dolby Digital encoding of the two other cards and optical SPDIF make them far better suited for home theater use. We must also note that the now-defunct XtremeMusic version of this card can still be found and is a better value. But for gamers, the X-Fi is the best choice.

BENCHMARKS
	X-Meridian 7.1
Fear 5.1 Min (FPS)	76
Fear 5.1 Avg (FPS)	154
Fear 5.1 Max (FPS)	308
Fear Dolby Digital Live Min (FPS)	n/a
Fear Dolby Digital Live Avg (FPS)	n/a
Fear Dolby Digital Live Max (FPS)	n/a
3DMark03 2.1 0 Sources	85.5
3DMark03 2.1 24 Sources	77.1
3DMark03 2.1 60 Sources	71.1
3DMark03 DDL 0 Sources	n/a
3DMark03 DDL 24 Sources	n/a
3DMark03 DDL 60 Sources	n/a
Best scores are bolded. Our killer rig consisted of an Athlon 64 FX-60, 2GB of DDR400, 400GB 7,200rpm, and a GeForce 7950 GX2 running Windows XP Professional.