Creative unleashes PCI Sound Blaster hardware

Creative Technology has unveiled the latest addition to its Sound Blaster line, the X-Fi Titanium series, which it claims is the world's first native PCI Express hardware accelerated sound cards.

Priced at $149.99, the PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series features Dolby Digital encoding for single cable connection to home theatre systems.

The card also delivers accelerated audio for improved game performance, with EAX 5.0 effects and 3D positional audio.

Priced at $199.99, the Champion Series sound card includes all of the features of the Professional Series, plus an internal I/O drive for quick front panel connection to headphones and headsets as well as a mic-in and RCA line-in connections.

"Audio plays a huge factor in professional gaming, where every competitive advantage can make the difference between winning and losing," said world champion gamer Johnathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel.

"The Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty edition sound cards significantly enhance any professional gaming rig, enabling us to hear what we can't see and perform at our highest level."

Steve Erickson, vice president and general manager of audio and VLSI at Creative, added: "We've developed the PCI Express models of our Sound Blaster X-Fi gaming sound cards to meet specific requests from end users.

"We have re-architected our X-Fi processor so we can deliver even more performance and provide the best audio available on the PC today."