"...the new drivers only restore that feature for 32-bit versions of Windows Vista."

Hmm.... maybe I should set up a dual boot. The fact that Vista dropped support for Direct Sound hardware acceleration still irks me! Otherwise I would use something besides this X-Fi PoS.

well since their shitty drivers have problems with more than 4GB ram in x64 vista, I pulled out the POS and use onboard audio

Creative needs to learn how to hire software people. But that's been true for almost 20 years.

and it only took them almost two years.

man, i am so happy i got a Xonar card.

I'm still running Windows XP exclusively, but it's too bad to see Creative only just implementing these features in their Vista drivers now. It's not like Vista is anywheres close to being a new OS anymore.

Speaking as a PC user for almost two decades now, my experience with sound cards not made by Creative Labs, or with onboard sound chips not made by Realtek, is that driver support tends to dry up sooner rather than later. I've bought many otherwise decent sound cards that were soon abandoned by the company that made them. In many cases, the company making the cards got out of the market. This is exactly what has just happened with my onboard SoundMAX. The end result is that I'm reluctant to go out and buy a card like the Xonar because my gut feeling tells me that I'll go out and spend good money and then go through the same experience as before with driver support.

And this is why I don't buy Creative anymore... these guys are incompetent amateurs.

Why do people buy Creative again? My last Creative card was on ISA.

If we ignore Creative, it might go away.... (like advertising)

I actually have an X-Fi and Vista32. It worked fine using the latest beta in most things. I updated STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl to the latest 1.06 patch, and I started getting random quips of sounds, like it wasn't processing distance properly. Things that were far away were being played at the incorrect volume, etc. The new drivers from Creative fixed it. So far I'm a happy camper with them.

32 bit only.... man... weak...

everyone at creative needs to become the star in a donkey show like the little be-otches they are

I believe they also released a driver update for the Audigy series that restores some of the functionality listed here as well, some time in July. I know I saw (and installed) an update for my Audigy 2 ZS.

I'd honestly rather get a Xonar for my Vista x64 system, but my mainboard has something in the way of making it fit in the PCI-E x1 slot. :(

what's a sound card?

Sorry meant to be a reply, please delete

I don't know whether Dan has his hands in this, but either way, it's a good step. He left for good after a cease&desist mail he got, and while later some Creative officials confirmed that the mail in question was not from them (it was fake), he still didn't seem to return. His filefront folder has also been off ever since. I sent him an e-mail to try to nudge him back (also mentioning the fake mail) but no response appeared anywhere at all.

He might be tired, afraid, lazy, or a custom combination. Anyway, I'm still using his drivers with the extra tools available to them, even though Creative updated their Audigy drivers as per this news post, too, and earlier than the X-Fi ones.