Games
Creative's real strength has always been its game performance. The X-Fi has provisions for all the flavors of EAX, up to #5. New for the X-Fi are some very impressive HRTF for us headphone junkies. The headphone support on the X-Fi rocked my world, man. EAX 5 HD encorporates a few older EAX functions into a single one, the Environment FlexiFX. What's new is the MacroFX, which simulates very close objects. Couple it with headphones and you'll remember few moments more intense than an upclose knife vs. shock paddle fight with the MacroFX on.
I must be hearing things.
Most of the features available on the X-Fi are application dependent, which means it is up to the development team to write code for the sound API. We witnessed this with id and Doom3, which was asked to use Creative's API.
We took a look at several games of the moment, to check out how they fare with the X-Fi.
I was a little hesitant to publish benchmark results because the test machine I have is not very current. In any case, laugh all you want, the benchmarks are okay only if you keep them within the scope of the article. You'll still see the X-Fi working its acceleration magic on this crop of games.
The test machine configuration is thus:
- CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (@1466 MHz)
- Mem: 2Gb Crucial PC3200
- Mobo: Asus A7N8X-Deluxe 1007 Uber
- Video: eVGA GeForce FX5900SE (400/700MHz core/mem)
- nVidia 78.01
- OS: WinXP Pro SP2, DX9c (4.09.0000.0904)
- Audio: Terratec DMX 6-fire (5.40.0003.0130)
- Audio: Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Music (5.12.0001.1143)
I used FRAPS 2.64 to count frames and translated those numbers to graphs with these games:
- F.E.A.R. Demo
- Call of Duty 2 Demo
- Doom 3
- CS: Source
- Battlefield 2
F.E.A.R. Demo
Ok, not the hottest screenshot. The dude's head is on the left, body on right.
I believe the demo is not as polished as the final shipping game, but this is what X-Fi did for this title. Resolution was set very low to eliminate the video card and the CPU as the limit.
As you can see, the X-Fi doesn't waste any time with this one. Some interesting notes, the X-Fi was even faster on average with EAX and CMSS-3DHeadphone on than with both disabled. The entire set was done three times (that's 15 run-throughs each, folks) to make sure I do not need a new prescription.
The most satisfying sound was from the DMX 6-fire unadorned, without 3D acceleration. Sensaura3D did not produce all sounds, like picking up items. X-Fi's EAX modes were odd, stepping over bodies made for a very loud BANG! noise and CMSS imparted a sound like you were cupping your ears the entire time.
Call of Duty 2 Demo
Wine in the desert? Everybody knows, that should be whiskey.
Call of Duty 2 Demo is mostly scripts, but it's fun to play the part.
It's pretty close with this one. It is also clear that this game will need some strong hardware to run fast. We see more of the trend that enabling the CMSS3D is no problem at all and doesn't cost anything. You will notice that the DMX 6-fire and X-Fi actually run faster with Sensaura/EAX on. This interestingly points out that CoD2 is CPU bound and that the standard sound engine is taking up resources. CoD2 is a good case for using accelerated audio.
Subjectively, they are about equal. For my pleasure, the DMX 6-fire was the best with EAX enabled. Some of the airplane sounds were more present and directional. The X-Fi EAX introduced a slight lag, that is when an airplane passed overhead, the sound would follow a short time after. But I note that the modes were strikingly similar with or without EAX on.
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