The I don't want a Creative Sound Card discussion

So, I think I've narrowed down the cause of my random once every few hours hard locks in Vista.. Disabled my Creative Audigy 2 ZS and enabled the onboard sound on my A8N32-SLI Deluxe and I have not crashed all day.

Since I am using the latest drivers, it seems now either the Creative Alchemy package is causing crashes, or the drivers are the problem..

Seeing as I'm starting to get fed up with how badly Creative fumbled Vista and their general ineptness at drivers, I figured I could start a discussion on good sound cards to use with Windows Vista, for gaming specifically.

I think you can find pretty good drivers for vista on creative forums..

Well, I have also been searching for Creative alternatives for gaming in Vista x64. Unfornatly your really SOLed in this department as there is only one sound card that competes with XFI. The Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 and this card cost about $199.99. This RFD and home of el cheapos so I know they will never spend that much. They are other alternatives but at lower price but your games will take 5-15% preformance hit in frames per second due to the audio processing.There is no EAX 5.0 support and these are audiophile cards not gaming cards. Bluegears' b-Enspirer, Sondigo Inferno 7.1 ,AuzenTech X-Meridian ( X-Meridian is discontunied and expensive but the best if you can find it ), Asus Xonar D2,Razer Barracuda AC-1 all based on the C-media Oxygen HD CMI8788.Creative has monopoly on gaming and the best we can do is sit and wait for them to perfect there drivers or buy the Auzentech X-Fi Prelude or use onboard sound.

You're using an audigy 2. That's an ancient card.
Instead of complaining about your old soundcard not working with new software, you should think about spending $60 on a new one.
You can't expect a company to support their old products forever. That would cost too much $$$$.

Yeah. Old cards, people gives up on making vista drivers.

I have like a really old creative sound blaster Live! 5.1 sound card.

You think i'd find vista drivers for them? Not really.


the Audigy cards sort of have good drivers.
I'm running the vista driver for my audigy 2 ZS Notebook card, and i loaded the XP creative console and such.

I'm not having any probs. I dunno about you.

Check yoru drivers, and google some more.

I am using a razer AC-1 sound card and it works just fine with Vista, sound is good, drivers arent bloated like creatives are, only problem is the lack of some of the higher eax's that creative wont share.

Best Audigy drivers for Vista so far (or at least for me on my Audigy 4),

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...ssage.id=25012

No guarantees, but SB Live Value/4.1/5.1 drivers for Vista,

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...ssage.id=23567

Edit: Almost forgot, Alchemy for Audigy,

http://forums.creative.com/creativel...ssage.id=18972

The drivers do work.. they just happen to cause my computer to hard lock after a few hours of gaming. Which makes them rather annoying to use.

Judging from the mass of problems on the Creative Forums with the X-Fi cards and Vista, I don't think buying an X-Fi will be a proper solution to the problem of Creative's drivers.

Looks like I'll be using onboard sound for a while then.

I think a lot of the Creative issues have been related to motherboards. My motherboard used to have issues with not detecting the X-Fi card sometimes. A BIOS update fixed that. The latest drivers seem to work fine for me on Vista.