Creative Labs SB0880 PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Sound Card

It DOES work with Windows 7 (64 bit)! Please read the rest of my post because it may help you. I upgraded my OS from Vista to Windows 7 and needed a Windows 7 compatible sound card. I did some research and chose this card over the Extreme X-Fi. I installed the sound card and booted up my PC, without disabling the onboard audio. After I downloaded the drivers, it worked nicely for about 30 minutes. Afterwards, I was getting popping and crackling noises throughout my music. I disabled the onboard audio, in the BIOS, and then I removed the drivers and downloaded them again. (I did this several times.) Problem did not go away. I removed the drivers, again, and restarted my pc, allowing Windows 7 to apply the Microsoft HD audio device driver. The noise went away, and the music sounded pretty good, but I wanted the full functionality that I paid for. I contacted Creative tech support, and they were very helpful. I used some of their suggestions and added some of my own ideas. Here's how I got the sound card to work properly: 1.) I removed the sound card from my PC. 2.) I went to Device Manager and uninstalled the sound card. 3.) I went to Programs and uninstalled ALL software from Creative. 4.) I went to my PC vendor's website and downloaded the latest BIOS, drivers and firmware. 5.) I ran Norton Utilities 15 to scan and fix any errors on my C drive and registry. (It removed about 1500 temp files from my repeated attempts to reinstall the sound card drivers.) 6.) I installed the sound card into a different PCIe slot on my motherboard. (Even though Creative tech support, expressly, stated that I should not install the sound card in the PCIe slot right next to the video card, I ended up doing that because it was the only other slot available.) 7.) I went to the BIOS and disabled the onboard audio. 8.) I downloaded the drivers for the sound card from Creative's website. DO NOT USE THE CD THAT CAME IN THE BOX. The sound card has been working, beautifully, for two weeks, now. I don't know what combination of the steps that I took to fix the problem did the trick, but it's better to be thorough. I am using some cheap speakers and headphones, but the sound is more nuanced than what I was getting from the Realtek HD onboard audio that I was using with Vista. Be careful because the volume is very loud! When you change modes or settings the volume can reset to something very high and blow out your eardrums! Overall, I highly recommend this product. Now, I just need to buy some better speakers and/or headphones so that I can get the full benefits of this sound card.

I wish more of these reviews for computer peripherals would state what kind of operating system and some other ancillary specs to get a better idea if this is really for me. If you use Vista or XP, it is really important to know what operating system the good or bad review was referring to. I replaced an Audigy 2zs Creative card with this Ttianium card, and the sound generated by this card is so crisp, Titanium is the perfect word to describe it. I am using a 3.2 ghz Gateway Intel with XP for operating and 4gb of RAM. With the Audigy 2zs, the software(not the drivers), was always a little bit tricky to slam in, and the software is essential. This X-fi Titanium(pci-e card), was a dream, it loaded all the software pefectly. The 2zs software was always a bit buggy, but always worked in. No problems at all with the X-Fi. Great extra software too. The best experience with these Creative cards is had with a great pair of headphones. This is the true test. I use Sony's best 7509 model, and the Hphones are literally shaking your head, and no I'm not deaf yet. The software with the Titanium is sweet. You get a stereo receiver graphic that comes up with a big volume knob and bass/treble knobs. The lit up dash provides EAX, graphic EQ, speakers setup, and other tweaks to tailor your sound. Previous Creative software models required you to bring up a separate box for each tweak. This a solid 5*****!! UPDATE----So good, I just bought another one for a w7 computer I just built. The Intel DP55sb Extreme series board has nice optical audio i/o's but is still fairly anemic in the dynamic dept.. I took my headphones from there and went over to my XP/Titanium setup and "my god" what a difference. So the onboard sound is overboard! Flotsam! If you can't get this to work on Win7, go back to Playstation 1. Current driver and software slammed in perfect from the Creative site. Dashboard even has a few different looking graphics and adjustments. Driver disc is worthless for w7 use. Makes the optical array on the Intel Extreme mobo sound like an iPod with earbuds. If you want to hear the entire spectrum of sound and feel it, get this card. I have completely forgotten about its progenitor the Audigy 2zs line of cards. It's like someone talking about the best meal they ever had, until you eat one you won't know.

PROS: I built a computer back in June and really wanted to go all out on it. So after it was built, I realized I forgot a soundcard. I heard terrible things about Windows 7 and creative drivers. I went ahead and bought this soundcard because it was in my price range and had a few friends tell me that it was great and worth it. After it got here in two days for free (Thanks Amazon Prime!) I quickly put it on my system and booted it up. I realized that I didnt even really need any drivers for my soundcard. Today I am shocked that after one month with this card, its been great on win 7 and I have had ZERO problems. My motherboard onboard was fairly decent (p6X58D-E) but after purchasing this and actually tweaking it (read more in CONS), it became apparent that in games this soundcard did a MUCH better job in finding people and more accurately. I have it tweaked for gaming, so its not the best when listening to music/movies (was the same I guess on my onboard). CONS: Only two cons that I can think of. When first inserting the card, I realized that it sounded pretty bad at first. Then I talked to a friend and realized that I should go into the control panel and tweak some of the settings. After tweaking it to his recommended settings, my sound sounded way better. Second con is the fact that I have the volume on the lowest and it reads 6%. That is not the problem. For some reason, my sound is pretty high even on the lowest setting. Not sure how to fix it, but its not THAT big of a deal (unless people scream in ventrilo and me having open headphones I turn around to be sure no one is like WTF in my house :] ) -- Overall, its a great soundcard that works great with windows 7. If you want to know what settings I have it tweaked on, leave a comment. Ill try to find it (the guy linked me to a website).

This sound card replaced a older Sound Blaster Live Plat PCI interface card from at least a decade ago. That card still works it was just slower and not as many options as this card has. The install was seamless and I was up and running with the new PciX sound card in 15 minutes top. I use my sound cards to record my demos and this card really cranked for sure. It made the PC and older Altec Lansing 5.1 speakers sound really nice. I was able to record a few demo's, crank some tunes then a week after the install the card just died. I removed it; reset it even put in a different machine and it was DEAD. so I contacted Amazon.com and their return policy was great except they no longer had stock available. I then purchased a different brand of sound card (Asus) and I am still waiting for its arrival. A few days after ordering the replacement card Amazon had stock available again at a noticeable price increase. Its a nice sounding card that will wake up your computer and with all the additional apps you have so much more than a regular sound card. I rated it a 1 because it died after a week in the PC.

5/20/14 EDIT: MUSIC PRODUCERS. Be careful. Reason (a program used to make music) actually killed this card. It skipped and popped during recording and now whenever I try to use the card, there's a loud humming and buzzing in the right speaker/headphone. Bought an Asus Xonar after this beauty died. Sad to say that the sound quality of the Asus us nowhere near this one, unfortunately. But after this card and Reason killed my soundcard, my sound has taken to skipping every now and then even with the new card. It really damaged something. Had to dock a couple stars, sorry, Creative. Perma-damage to my comp is worth three stars docked, so feel lucky I liked the sound of it so much. That, and I can't hold all of the blame to you. Reason most likely had something to do with it, too. Before I get replies saying it probably wasn't the sound card, I want to say I'm certified in PC Repair. There MAY be a chance it COULD be the PSU (power supply). I have tried replacing it already. I believe the damage may be to my motherboard. BE CAREFUL. Just got this in today, but so far it's AMAZING. The quality from HD onboard to this card is insanely better. I hear a HUGE bass difference in dubstep, my games run faster, the voice changer is hilarious! Err... on that note, never trust an online relationship that only goes by voice or chat... the male to female voice changer is REALLY good and believable. I couldn't believe that was my voice. The elderly man was HILARIOUS. The card came with a bunch of freebies (pretty much bloatware that I'll be giving a try anyways) and is super customizable. Has different modes and such (ex: gaming, entertainment). Realtek was screwing my microphone over. I could barely hear myself! There is a slight hissing in recording with this card, but I turned my mic down a bit to get rid of it. I'll keep you updated if it breaks! GREAT deal for refurb! Just like new (so far). Purchased mine from S.G. Enterprises.

I've owned a handful of soundcards, mostly of the creative sound blaster product line. I remember the first ones I bought were basically to get anything better than onboard sound. When I purchased this card I thought at the time I had done enough research, and had learned a thing or two about sound cards. I built a brand new computer last year, everything from the case inward was planned researched and purchased to assemble a monster gaming and audio recording rig. I like to play modern games and occassionaly record music on pc. I chose this card based on the prior success I had with a sound blaster live 5.1 card I owned for at least 3 years prior and because of the other features. I feel like I made a great choice. The sound is fantastic, and I hadn't really went through all of the features until recently when I started digging into the software programs like the console launcher. It's a fantastic tool that I have not seen before with any other sound card. It's great to have 3 different modes that I can switch to based on what I am doing on my computer at the moment. The feature feels, though, that it could be just a bit better if it had some type of profile settings that you could save. Sure, the program remembers that I like to have bass boosted when I'm playing games to feel the explosions rumble, and to tone down the low notes and add a little more hifi exciter when I'm listening to music but it feels like there could be more personalization to each of the modes so that I don't have to tweak little things like auto-muting the speakers when I switch to headphones while gaming, but I don't mind if the speakers are on even with my headphones attached during audio creation mode. Just little things like that I feel could be improved but maybe they are hardcodes that the developers really have no control over. That's beyond me. As far as the quality goes I really do feel like this is a fantastic piece of hardware. Could there be better quality cards out there? Sure, but I feel like I got a good deal with this. If there is a increase in quality out there I would think it would be pretty minute. The only real beef I have is with the software itself. Beyond the lack of personal profiles I have had quite a few issues with the software not loading, driver errors, and occassionaly my machine reporting that I do not have a compatible sound blaster card installed to launch a sound blaster app. It's usually a quick fix of hopping over to the creative site and either downloading a new driver or uninstalling/reinstalling a program. That is where I have been frustrated. If the software wouldn't fail I would give it a 5 star rating. If this product failed or was damaged/lost or stolen I do believe I would repurchase this card or another from creative. I've owned many of their products and have never been let down, give or take a few software errors. If you got the money and you're looking for a hi quality card for gaming, music listening, or audio creation grab this hardware. Just be ready to fuss with the programs a few times and make sure you have the correct pci slot on your motherboard.

I bought this card for my dad's computer after researching many other brands and models. While I considered others, I ended up choosing this card due to the features (especially the 24 bit converter) and the fact that I still use a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS in my own computer that I bought about six years ago and still like very much. The computer that this was installed in was a newer Dell with Windows 7 and on-board sound. The installation was super easy. As a matter of fact, Windows 7 actually went out on the internet and automatically found the latest driver. The speaker system is a Logitech Z-2300 2.1 and the sound is phenomenal! My dad was blown away by how good it sounds and he owns a high-end Adcom Stereo system so he is no stranger to good sound. One thing worth mentioning, make sure you install Creative's console software and if you are running Windows 7 with Windows Media 12, enable Creative's equalizer and disable the equalizer in Windows Media 12. The WM12 equalizer was producing fluctuations in the sound levels which was more noticeable on certain songs than others. Once the WM12 equalizer was turned off, these fluctuation went away. This sound fluctuation was not a result of the sound card installation... the fluctuations were present before the installation of the sound card. We thought that the on-board sound processor was causing the fluctuations until we installed the sound card and they were still present (to a somewhat lesser degree) I am sure that Creative's top-of-the-line Titanium HD sounds even better, but for the money, I believe this is a tough card to beat. Plus it has a front panel connector which when connected will automatically detect headphones and change the settings for optimal headphone sound. Creative did their homework on this one!

Missed my old X-Fi but couldn't use it for my new build as it is PCI. Decided to give the Audigy Rx a try. Having to "break-out" the channels with three-way splitter cables was simple enough, but they introduced a constant hum that I couldn't get rid of. Tried a bunch of different drivers to no avail. Switched over to on-board Realtek HD Audio and it sounded pretty good. Then I found this PCIe version on Amazon. If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought this card was brand new, never used. Got it installed and loaded up Daniel K's XFI SupportPack 8.0, and holy cow! I got my X-Fi sound back! Blows the Audigy and Realtek audio out of the water. Daniel K's driver and software loaded up perfectly and everything works. My "speaker" system is a Razer Tiamat 7.1 v2 and it sounds incredible. I use the optical out to my Polk Audio soundbar/sub and it sounds amazing. Now I can crank it up as loud as I can stand it and the sound no longer breaks up at the higher volume levels. They gave this card the right name, Titanium. Highly recommended. Works perfectly with the latest version of Windows 10 and the latest Windows 11 preview build. Thank you Daniel K, Creative and Amazon. One year later and currently on Windows 11 Pro 22H2 and this card still works flawlessly.

Love Creative Soundcards!!! Only way to go !!!