Creative's Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium sound card fits into the PCI-E x1 slot on a motherboard. Installing the card was easy, although its metal shield came very close to touching the graphics card in the PCI-E x16 slot below it. Most motherboard layouts should provide enough space to fit the card. If you don't have a spare PCI-E x1 slot, the card should also work in PCI x4 and PCI-E x16 slots.
Software installation can be more complicated. To avoid conflicts with on-board sound, we recommend disabling it in the BIOS and making sure that you have removed its respective drivers, particularly if you're upgrading from a Creative card.
An advantage of Creative's gaming cards is their EAX hardware processing. This is used for environmental sounds such as changes in the sound of footfalls on different surfaces, the reverberation of gunfire in different spaces and other subtle effects that help to create a sense of total immersion in games. The Titanium has EAX 5.0 and it was extremely effective, particularly in games such as Prey, which became more immersive.
Like most modern sound cards, the X-Fi Titanium's driver supports Steinberg's Audio Stream Input/Output (ASIO) standard, which allows compatible audio applications to talk directly to the sound card, bypassing Windows' built-in audio mixing layer. This reduces latency, which is the time it takes for an audio signal to get from the sound card to an application, or vice versa. This can be a major advantage for audio production, but we can't imagine many gamers wanting this feature.
If you use your PC as part of a home theatre system, you'll appreciate the optical S/PDIF in/out and support for Dolby Digital Surround EX and Dolby Digital Live, which allows you to up-mix ordinary stereo sound to a set of 5.1 speakers via optical S/PDIF. You'll have to buy an S/PDIF cable separately, though. The card also has 3.5mm analogue 7.1 outputs, in addition to a standard stereo output.
The Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Professional is great if you play a lot of games, but its relatively high price and specialised features mean it's overkill if you simply want to improve on your on-board audio. Budget-conscious buyers should opt for Asus's Xonar DX (opposite) for gaming, or Terratec's Aureon Dual USB for a quick, inexpensive improvement to audio quality.
3.5mm analogue stereo, 7.1 analogue outputs, optical S/PDIF out, optical S/PDIF in, 3.5mm mic/line in, 96kHz maximum sample rateAuthor: Kat Orphanides
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Professional