Creative Sound is a well-known name within the audio card world. Even though the company recently put out a very popular and extremely efficient Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 Series, this latest addition to the Sound Blaster family seems like a great fit. If you’re looking for a sound card that really does impress, the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS is one to consider. A nice array of new and well-planned features make the audio output of this sound card impressive while the price tag attached to the card is bearable.

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty Features

The main reason why Creative Sound created the Sound Blaster X-Fi was to improve audio sound by leaps and bounds. Creative Sound accomplished this goal by including the much-hyped 24-bit Crystallizer, which is, essentially a specific processing tool that brings the quality of digital music to a whole new level. When tested, it was obvious what the 24-bit Crystallizer can do and the sound is really tough to beat. Creative Sound’s goal with the 24-bit Crystallizer was to match the sound of a digital track as closely as possible to the sound of an original track – a tough thing to do. Given all of the bad sounds cards on the market right now, this one really stands out from the pack.

Creative Sound also offers various Sound Blaster packages depending on what you’re looking for in a sound card. For $130 you can purchase the Xtreme Music edition, which includes the sound card. If you want to ramp up the sound a bit, check out the $200 X-Fi Platinum (various inputs, drive bay plate, IR remote, and a few other additions). The most expensive option in this lineup is the Elite Pro, which will cost you around $400 for lots of inputs and outputs, the same drive-pay port plate that’s offered with the Platinum edition, port hub, 64MB of RAM, and various other features.

The X-Fi Fatal1ty sits at the middle of the pack with a price tag of $280 and comes with the famed 24-bit Crystallizer and X-ram. This sound card can be used for a variety of reasons, but it performs especially well when it comes to gaming. If you’re current system is lacking gaming sound-wise, it’s really, really, tough to beat what Creative Sound is putting out. Serious gamers take note: this is one sound card that you don’t want to miss out on.

Overall Performance and Rating

Creative Sound does put out other cards that are more expensive than the X-Fi Fatal1ty, but in this case expensive doesn’t mean better. In comparison to most other sound cards currently on the market, the X-Fi Fatal1ty provides impressive sound bringing both studio quality details and deep notes to any soundtrack or digital music tune tested. If you’re in the market for an excellent sound card and you don’t want to spend more than $300, the X-Fi Fatal1ty is tough to beat. For all that it offers and for the way that it performs (even out-performs), the X-Fi Fatal1ty earns top marks in this reviewer’s opinion.