Long ago, Creative Labs introduced the Audigy line of sound cards. Gamers were abuzz with glee, until the infamous Squeal of Death was discovered.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,48708,00.asp
The problem turned out to be some kind of conflict with the PCI bus, and the solution turned out to be updating the BIOS for certain motherboards. This wasn't the first problem Creative Labs had with the PCI bus. An earlier sound card (I can't recall which) had the potential to cause corruption on the PCI bus for certain computers.
Now we come to today. Creative Labs have released a major new series of cards: the Xi-Fi. Once again, gamers are all giddy, and once again, there's a problem with the PCI bus:
http://forums.creative.com/creativel...nding&page=122
(Leaf through some of the previous 120+ pages of complaints by customers. People got really mad there.)
I've heard hardware eggheads comment that Creative Labs sound cards tend to create a lot of traffic on the PCI bus, but why is it only Creative Labs that consistently has these problems?
I'm glad I did my research before my most recent sound card purchase. I almost bought a Xi-Fi until I encountered the above-linked thread. Now I'm getting an Audigy 2ZS instead.
Still, why didn't Creative Labs learn their lesson the first time? Yeesh.
