Howdy leonchik-ga,
The Creative website gives us the theory behind "Xtreme Fidelity RAM," also
known as "X-RAM."
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/X-Fi/technology/x-ram/gamingXram.asp?page=3
"...
- A game that detects X-RAM can decompress its data at load time into it so
that it does not have to spend precious processor cycles decompressing data
during runtime.
- A game that detects X-RAM can use higher quality audio assets that it might
not be able to use otherwise.
- An application that detects X-RAM can load sounds into it instead of
streaming them from the hard drive.
...
The benefits of X-RAM will be seen in future titles
..."
Please note the use of "game/application that detects X-RAM" above, because
that is important to the buying decision.
This Digit-Life.com review, dated February 7, 2006, talks to the support by
games for X-RAM.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi-part3.html
"Does X-RAM provide real advantage in games? It does, but it can be said for
sure only about new games that were created in cooperation with Creative
programmers. There are only a few such games so far, but they are all hits:
DOOM3 1.3, DOOM3:ROE, Quake4, BattleField 2, BattleField 2:SF."
This report on the "The Tech Report" website titled "Creative's Sound Blaster
X-Fi Fatal1ty audio card - Much ado about X-RAM" by Geoff Gasior and dated
March 17, 2006 does an analysis of Quake 4 and Battlefield 2 on this card.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/xfi-fatal1ty/index.x?pg=1
From my reading of the above review, and the lack of industry-wide support
for X-RAM, there does not appear to be any substantial reason to buy the X-Fi
Fatal1ty over the X-Fi Platinum, despite X-RAM being a good concept overall.
If you need any clarification, please feel free to ask.
Search strategy:
Google search on: "Xtreme Fidelity RAM"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22Xtreme+Fidelity+RAM%22
Google Search on: "X-RAM" support OR supports
://www.google.com/search?q=%22X-RAM%22+support+OR+supports
Looking Forward, denco-ga - Google Answers Researcher |
