New X-Fi Win 7 Beta Drivers

[VegasDen]

The date says January 28....get 'em now.

This download is a beta driver providing Microsoft® Windows® 7 Beta support for Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ series of audio devices. For more details, read the rest of this web release note.

Take note of the following:

• THIS IS AN UNSUPPORTED BETA DRIVER. There is no technical support for this driver.
• We recommend that only experienced users install this driver. Do not install this driver on a system used to perform critical tasks.
• Users who are looking for stable drivers should wait for the final release. When this happens, user should install the latest Sound Blaster X-Fi series driver available.

This download supports the following audio devices only:

• Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
• Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty® Professional Series
• Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion Series
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
• Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
• Sound Blaster X-Fi

Requirements:

• Microsoft Windows 7 Beta
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series audio devices listed above

 

[Sailindawg]

I just installed these drivers. I was previously using the latest Vista drivers. I'm running 64 bit.

These betas seem to have cleared up an issue I was having with COD:WAW. Whenever I used the game mode from the Creative Console launcher, the sound for the game would hang when shutting down the game and the game would hang upon shut down.

Now game mode can be used and WAW shuts down normally. HOWEVER, ALChemy still hangs the game at shut down. I can't use ALChemy with WAW. In game mode without ALChemy, I still get positional 3D sound from my 4.1 speakers.

For music, these drivers sound a bit crisper and cleaner in entertainment mode. All options work in entertainment mode, from CMSS 3D to EAX.

Creative has taken a step in the right direction with these drivers. Glad to see that they are paying attention, expecially to a beta OS.

 

[swarfega]

Hmm Creative only mention "Windows 7" and neither 32-bit or 64-bit is mentioned.

 

[SnapCount]

Nice find

 

[xan K]

it's not usual to see creative responding so well to the masses :sarc:. so, props to them for this release.

 

[swarfega]

But does it suppport 64-bit?

 

[ElGoorf]

im using it on 64-bit, worked at first, but now im having issues, funnily enough they seem to be having compatability problems with age of empires 1. occassioanlly the game crashes, i reboot, and find my sound isnt working.. :S

 

[Sailindawg]

im using it on 64-bit, worked at first, but now im having issues, funnily enough they seem to be having compatability problems with age of empires 1. occassioanlly the game crashes, i reboot, and find my sound isnt working.. :S

Are you using ALChemy? I have run CODWAW, COD4, World in Conflict, Company of Heroes & HL2 Source games. All have worked well with ALChemy, except WAW. WAW would crash when shuting down because the dsound.dll file from ALChemy hangs.

If I run without ALChemy, everything just works. I'm using an Xtrteme Music sound card.

 

[ElGoorf]

nope, not using alchemy. on xfi gamer.

 

[albert0373]

Arghhhhhhhhh...

Why won't they support the Xtreme Audio?!

 

[swarfega]

Because its a beta and Creative dont produce very good betas

 

[v8ornot2v8]

Fatal1ty X-FI

I got the older PCI Fatal1ty X-FI sound card in my Windows XP (32) system.

I am thinking going to Windows 7 - is the X-FI W7 Beta driver good for this card?

Has anyone used it with Quake 4?

 

[Sailindawg]

I got the older PCI Fatal1ty X-FI sound card in my Windows XP (32) system.

I am thinking going to Windows 7 - is the X-FI W7 Beta driver good for this card?

Has anyone used it with Quake 4?

Ought to work fine. I'm using an XtremeMusic that's a couple of years old now. My card works fine with these drivers. It's some of the newer lower end cards that don't so so well at the moment.

 

[arstron]

Does anyone know if these drivers will work with the xfi xpress card for a laptop? I have one coming and was just wondering ahead of time.

 

[wrathloki]

Do these drivers work for the X-fi Titanium cards? Seems weird that it wouldn't since basically every other card is supported.

 

[Zuntar]

I just loaded Win7 last night and my X-fi Music was not to be seen. I'll give it a try tonight! ktnx

 

[dsopocy]

Continued X-Fi Crackling and Popping

Help!

I'm getting continued crackling and popping from my OEM X-Fi XtremeMusic no matter what I try. I get random pops even when no sounds are playing and static and pops distort any music I play. The distortion continues for a while and then sound stops altogether. Going into Speakers properties and changing the Default Format (Advanced tab) to any other frequency and testing restores distored sound for a while and then I have to repeat the sample rate reset. (I normally keep it at 24 bit, 4800 Hz as recommended in another thread.)

I've tried all of the solutions on this forum. I first tried installing the modded X-Fi drivers recommended in another thread, and than the new beta drivers the day they became available. Neither made any difference. I then suspected the onboard Realtek AC'97 might be the culprit, so I tried disabling the Realtek driver (no effect), installing the v2.14 HD audio driver (does not replace the v6.1.0.5879 12/01/2006 driver installed by Windows 7 regardless of whether or not I use Vista compatability mode), and installing the updated v6.0.1.6285 x64 3/25/2008 Realtek AC'97 driver - all to no avail. I currently have reverted to the Windows 7 Realtek driver and have muted Realtek audio output with the levels control as recommended in another thread.

In Sound Management, I have 3 devices showing. Speakers - Creative SB X-Fi (default), SPDIF Out - Creative SB X-Fi (Ready), and Speakers - Realtek AC'97 Audio (Ready). Only the Speakers - Creative SB X-Fi generates sound when tested.

The only possibility I've been able to unearth is alluded to in an article posted on the Creative support site: X-Fi Sound Cards Crackling and Popping. While I suspect this article is targeted at problems arising with resource-intensive games, it does identify an area of incompatibility with nVidia nForce 4 motherboards where X-Fi PCI bus master memory requests for audio data are being held off for much longer intervals than specified by PCI bus standards and tolerances. I tried the only fix suggested by this article, installing the nHancer app to access and tweak X-Fi settings, however access to tweak maximum interrupt deferral times (DPC) was not supported for my card and there were no other settings accessible that might alleviate my problem, if this is indeed my root cause. (I did NOT experience this problem running Vista Ultimate 64-bit.)

Does anyone have any bright ideas?

Otherwise I have to hope for a new improved Windows 7 nVidia nForce4 driver that addresses this issue (I'm not optimistic this will happen.)

Dale

P.S.
Please click on icon above and add to my reputation if you have found my posts to be helpful.

 

[Zuntar]

Help!

I'm getting continued crackling and popping from my OEM X-Fi XtremeMusic no matter what I try. I get random pops even when no sounds are playing and static and pops distort any music I play. The distortion continues for a while and then sound stops altogether. Going into Speakers properties and changing the Default Format (Advanced tab) to any other frequency and testing restores distored sound for a while and then I have to repeat the sample rate reset. (I normally keep it at 24 bit, 4800 Hz as recommended in another thread.)

I've tried all of the solutions on this forum. I first tried installing the modded X-Fi drivers recommended in another thread, and than the new beta drivers the day they became available. Neither made any difference. I then suspected the onboard Realtek AC'97 might be the culprit, so I tried disabling the Realtek driver (no effect), installing the v2.14 HD audio driver (does not replace the v6.1.0.5879 12/01/2006 driver installed by Windows 7 regardless of whether or not I use Vista compatability mode), and installing the updated v6.0.1.6285 x64 3/25/2008 Realtek AC'97 driver - all to no avail. I currently have reverted to the Windows 7 Realtek driver and have muted Realtek audio output with the levels control as recommended in another thread.

In Sound Management, I have 3 devices showing. Speakers - Creative SB X-Fi (default), SPDIF Out - Creative SB X-Fi (Ready), and Speakers - Realtek AC'97 Audio (Ready). Only the Speakers - Creative SB X-Fi generates sound when tested.

The only possibility I've been able to unearth is alluded to in an article posted on the Creative support site: X-Fi Sound Cards Crackling and Popping. While I suspect this article is targeted at problems arising with resource-intensive games, it does identify an area of incompatibility with nVidia nForce 4 motherboards where X-Fi PCI bus master memory requests for audio data are being held off for much longer intervals than specified by PCI bus standards and tolerances. I tried the only fix suggested by this article, installing the nHancer app to access and tweak X-Fi settings, however access to tweak maximum interrupt deferral times (DPC) was not supported for my card and there were no other settings accessible that might alleviate my problem, if this is indeed my root cause. (I did NOT experience this problem running Vista Ultimate 64-bit.)

Does anyone have any bright ideas?

Otherwise I have to hope for a new improved Windows 7 nVidia nForce4 driver that addresses this issue (I'm not optimistic this will happen.)

Is your on board sound disabled in the BIOS? Win7 shouldn't even know its there if you disable it in the BIOS.

 

[dsopocy]

Is your on board sound disabled in the BIOS? Win7 shouldn't even know its there if you disable it in the BIOS.

Thanks, Zuntar. Integrated Sound was On in the BIOS by factory default. I disabled Integrated Sound in the BIOS and uninstalled the Realtek driver installation program for good measure. The Realtek AC'97 no longer shows up in Device Manager, however my problem is unabated (same amount of noise and sound quitting after a few minutes) after a warm and then a cold boot.

A symptom I failed to mention in my original post is that the popping anc crackling are present even in the system sounds that occur during Windows boot up.

What's your next idea?

 

[curmet]

HI, i need help!!

I have installed the beta driver for x-fi but now with Unreal Tournament 3 i don't have any sound with the intro's at the start of the game... and i'm not sure but i think i dont' have any audio with the story mode vids.
I also have a problem with Rainbow six: Vegas 2 because the video calls you get during Single Player, they have no sound. it's just the video.

And with Premiere Pro CS4 i don't have sound with allot, if not most, if not all my video files.

Does this mean the driver is at fault?