Auzentech X-Fi Forte 7.1 Review

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A little late to the party it seems. Nevertheless i've purchased a xfi forte as well since ncix had it on for 109.99. Pretty good deal, there's a $10 rebate but i don't really look forward to those. It's sold out as of right now; shame for those who missed out.

Long story short, my impression has been positive. I'm a Tower of Power fan and when i tried a few songs to compare, it's so crisp and clear so i'm shocked as to how much of a difference it made, and that we're talking about mp3s here.

I previously had a creative xfi xtrememusic. I'm not really sure where i stand on the whole crystalizer debate. Remember the days of that wow-srs plugin for winamp? It's like that, but now it's hardware based. CMSS i can assure you can do without. It seems to 'push' your speakers further away from you, best as i can describe it.

I remember reading somewhere that the card is long? It's the same length as my xtrememusic and shorter than my 8800GT, and i have no issues on my Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H, 780G model.

*edit* I have the Logitech Z5500 speakers.

[Snarl]

Just got my Forte, replaces on board sound in my Asus P5Q Motherboard. I really like the digital out and the Toslink adapter was much appreciated. It works awesome with my Edirol MA15D speaker (2.0 system) I bought these as they took a digital Toslink input. I'm also really also liking the sound on my Head Phones (Sennhieser PC350). I'm still learning how to use the software and tweaking the sound however so far I'm very happy, kind of like the best of both worlds i.e. Creative chipset, someone else's drivers :)

Mine also came installed with the standard (Larger) sized bracket

[alexroland]

My forte also came installed with the standard sized bracket.
the sound card really runs quite hot, so I just put some heatsinks on it, but overall I love this forte :)

[Babrbarossa]

Great review- thanks! I don't mind the dongle- easier to see where you're plugging things behind the case- especially with a 5.1 set of gaming headphones.

[ToXic]

just got one of these to replace a old PCI Fatal1ty Champion (slot was going to interfere with future SLI), now my only problem is the mini PCI-E for that type of card is hidden under a 4870 x2 heatsink, so i had to put it at the bottom PCI-E so it wouldn't touch my future SLI combo.

Must say its a great card! the driver install from the website was a little hard to get going at first but sure enough it works!

One thing i noticed different is mine came with the standard bracket installed and the low profile in a little baggy.

Good card for the price! very good on a logitech G51 setup!

I got mine free as a replacement for the Fatal1ty having one broken rear port (just found out yesterday when testing it) it costs about the same as the Fatal1ty did at the time, and they were nice enough to give me a PCI-E card instead of PCI.

[jwebby]

Great review, got one on order.

[proulx00]

Great write-up.

Thinking about changing my Titanium Fatality for one with a headphone amp.