I have a X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatality Professional series sitting here not installed. I am wondering if it is worth popping in my new build (see below). I am currently using the boards sound. I have had some game freezes where the screen and game freeze, but the sound loops - like it is stuck. Didn't know if adding the sound card would help or just dork things up more (I have heard sound blaster has not done a good job with Vista drivers.)

Q9450
790i Ultra
9800GTX x2 (SLI)
4gb DDR3 1600 (2x2gb)
2 raptors (Raid 0) - OS/programs
2 1tb spinpoints (Raid 1) - Data
PC Power and Cooling Turbocool 1200
2X Sata DVD burners
Vista x64 Ultimate

You paid good money for a nice card. No harm in popping it in, loading the drivers and objectively deciding for yourself which route is better. I'm sure the X-Fi is going to have superior sound reproduction, not to mention EAX support and some other goodies that probably aren't available with the onboard sound solution.

Grab the danielk's drivers if you're going to be using it with vista. They fix a lot of stuff that didn't(intentionally) work before but a few things are still out.

yep

if you using Vista i suggest getting those 3rd party drivers or you're going to have issues.

That's just your whole rig being unstable... if you aren't OC'd, I'd suggest manually setting voltages on the CPU and RAM, and setting memory speed/timings manually

If you are OC'd... you're not done yet heh

Ok I disabled my onboard in the bios, uninstalled the realtek drivers, rebooted safe mode, ran driver cleaner, shut down, installed the card, booted into safe mode and installed the Daniel K drivers, shut down plugged in speakers, and booted up -> No sound??

When i try to open the Audio Console to configure my speakers I get an error box that says

"The audio device supoorted by this application in not detected. The application will exit."

No conflicts in Device Manager - shows up as Creative SB X-fi

This is the file I downloaded says it is X-Fi 64bit Vista??

Anybody have any ideas??

UPDATE
I just went into the control panel and clicked on Sound - the X-fi came up, but it appears only the SPDIF is active and none of the other jacks are.

Any ideas?