Fucking Tech Show #5 – Creative’s terrible Vista drivers

I have a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS that has worked pretty good with Windows XP. Now it seems this sound card is doomed to die with XP.

 

Creative’s limp into the future
Now I have a 64-bit processor and I am ready to upgrade to Windows Vista 64-bit, you know, leaping into the technology of the future and leaving 32-bit to rot in the past.

There is only one problem; my Audigy 2 sound card does not have drivers for Vista that enable the same functionality that I have in XP, namely EAX HD. You know, it would be nice to run my new quad core baby and it’s 8800GT with some hot EAX HD sound. Well, Creative doesn’t think so. Creative does not consider Audigy 2 to be good enough for Vista.

When looking for Vista 64-bit drivers for Audigy 2, here is what I find:

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy series Vista Driver 2.12.0002 (38.30 MB) 16 Mar 07

Wow. No driver updates in over a YEAR, dude! Vista has been available for Creative in Beta release for them to update their drivers to work with Vista since 2005-2006.

But wait! That’s not all! Not only are there no new drivers in over a year, they are crippled and do not have hot EAX HD, as mentioned by the release notes from over a year ago:

Known issues:

* Applications from the original Sound Blaster Audigy CD will not work with this download.
* Users are advised to use Audio Console included in this download to change speaker configurations.
* This driver does not support the following:
o Decoding of Dolby® Digital and DTS™ signals
o DVD-Audio
o DirectSound®-based EAX games
o Gameports
o 6.1 speaker mode.
* SPDIF passthrough is supported on Vista 32-bit only.

Rrrrright. Do you are telling me that in over a year you could not get these features to work in Vista? Brilliant. Now I’m in 2008 and I have jack shit to use my Audigy 2 in Vista.

 

 

X-Fucked
When you support your customers that use older products, you are in very good shape to have them buy your products again in the future. Here is the proof. Since I had no Audigy 2 love for Vista, I then decided to shop around for an X-Fi, knowing it is a newer product and probably has full function drivers for Windows 64-bit. I was happy that I could have some EAX HD in Vista. Well, Creative doesn’t think so. Creative does not think that their X-Fi card is good enough for Vista.

X-Fi is just not working properly in Vista yet, even with X-Fi being Creative’s flagship product. X-Fi has problems with systems have more than 4 gigs of RAM. What the fuck? Having more than 4 gigs of RAM in my system is THE reason why I am running 64-bit, but X-Fi has problems with that. Unfuckingbelievable.

Get this, Creative is even going against Daniel_K, some dude who is making Creative drivers work the way they should. That is fucking kick ass. This also shows how some guy does better than a big company. Creative does not realise that Daniel_K is helping Creative have their products actually work, and they want him to stop. Yeah, great PR move, Creative! Fucking brilliant!
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1 (cache)

Not only that, Creative purposely disabled features for the Audigy drivers when Vista is detected on install. http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/daniel_k-who-fi.html (cache)

Also, some mad greets to the Digg community for raising this shit storm that Creative deserves.
http://digg.com/hardware/Creative_threatens_community_modder (cache)
Creative certainly is showing that they have no interest in their products to work in Vista. Retarded.

 

 

PCI Slomo
Ok, so no love for Audigy 2 and X-Fi for Vista, so I decided to see if Creative had any newer products that work in PCI Express instead of PCI. Their offering does not even do EAX at all. Creative, are you fucking serious? The PCI Express SupremeFX II that comes with my motherboard is looking like a better option for Vista than my Audigy 2 right now. At least THIS card has some EAX on it, when compared to Creative’s PCI Express board. I wonder what I will do when faced with the option of buying new hardware that will not even work, when I have free hardware with my motherboard? Yeah, no shit. Fuck Creative.

 

 

Creative killed all the fuzzies
Creative just does not give me warm fuzzies anymore. I never had warm fuzzies in the first place when having to downgrade from my Gravis to a Sound Blaster when Gravis killed their sound card division. You can’t make my Audigy 2 work in Vista when everything else in my system does, and not even your newer X-Fi works in Vista. I never had super warm fuzzies for Creative, but now all the fuzzies are dead. No more fucking fuzzies for Creative. Fucking terrible.

You see, I am TRYING to buy your products, but you don’t want me to buy any of your sound cards. I am shopping right now to buy a laptop sound card for my netcasting, but guess what? That’s right, it’s not going to happen with a Creative product. You simply don’t give a fuck about your sound card business anymore. I really think Creative is dead as far as sound card products go.

Creative products are capable and Vista has been around quite long enough for Creative to produce functional drivers for Audigy 2 and X-Fi, but Creative is doing fuck all.

Fuck you, Creative, I am not likely to purchase any of your fucking tech any time soon.