FX530 Owners - What's Your Sound Card?

Can you tell me the exact model of Sound Blaster X-FI PCI card that you have
installed in your FX530 system? I'm trying to identify mine.

I notice there are "now" two choices for the FX530: the Creative Sound
Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer PCI Sound Card [$79.00] or Creative Sound Blaster®
X-FI XtremeAudio PCI-E Card [$49.99].

The model number on my physical card says SB0460 and but according to the
Creative Labs Sound Blaster website it could either be the Sound Blaster
X-Fi Platinum (SB0460/SB0251) or Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
(SB0460/SB0464/SB0465).

The system didn't come with any documetation or software applications for
it. I did a Gateway recovery applications and drivers backup but it did't
include any Sound Blaster applications. I can download that stuff from the
Sound Blaster website but need to identify the exact model from their list
first.

Anyway, my new FX530 works great and I'm very pleased. It is very fast with
the Quad processor and 8800GTX graphics!

Only had a slight frustrating mixup with FedEx after it shipped in 7/18. The
monitor and speakers came 7/21, with the PC not coming the 21st while "out
for delivery" or even the scheduled ETA of 7/23. I had tried to request if I
could pick it up in the 21st but they told me no after I was told to check
back when the driver returns that evening. After much calling and emailing
they located it on the 24th sitting in their White Marsh MD wharehouse ever
since the 21st marked "hold" so I went there and picked it up myself this
past Tuesday after work!

Here are some additional tips for your system too:

In the end I left it configured as RAID 0. My attempted redo as non-RAID
didn't work so well because Vista setup doesn't recognise 2 separate hard
drives installed according to Microsoft. It only saw the second drive volume
as Disk1 (instead of the first drive volume as Disk0) to load the OS into
the partition. I found out a day later doing some online research that I
should have disconnected the second drive until after setup. Anyway, I
bought a 500gb Lacie external hard drive on sale at Best Buy for $100 to do
file/image backups with so I'm covered there.

You should know too that "if you update" the Nvidia drivers, there is a
known bug causing your system not to enter sleep mode correctly locking it
up after it turns off the monitor. If that happens you'll have to force the
PC off by holdng in the power button until it does. Windows knows it didn't
shutdown properly but you can just pick the "start normally" boot choice.
The workaround is to use Vista's "high performance" power selection where it
just shuts of the monitor without going into sleep mode. Nvidia has this
listed as an outstanding issue for Windows Vista so I expect they will
resolve this in a future driver release.

Steve

Response from Gateway tech support:

After making a research, we found out that although the card may be
similar with the models available from Creative, the card does not comes
with the software that the retail version comes with.

The sound cards at the Creative website is a retail version; thus the
sound card on your FX530S is an OEM version. An OEM version is a
custom-built component (which can be a hardware or even software) to a
specific computer brand, like Gateway.

However, the card installed would most closely resemble the Xi-Fi
Platinum. The technical specifications of the sound card is on the link
below.

Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card Technical Specifications:
http://support.gateway.com/s/SOUND/6...03057sp2.shtml

I just compared the X-Fi Platinum and XtremeMusic cards and the specs on
both cards are identical. Only difference is the Platinum comes with the I/O
Drive module for the drive bay. I don't know why Gateway says the below
because it didn't come with that. So to me it would be more like the
XtremeMusic product as packaged.

"Steve Mavronis" <> wrote in message
news:BsidnaEWJ-...
> Response from Gateway tech support:
>
> After making a research, we found out that although the card may be
> similar with the models available from Creative, the card does not comes
> with the software that the retail version comes with.
> The sound cards at the Creative website is a retail version; thus the
> sound card on your FX530S is an OEM version. An OEM version is a
> custom-built component (which can be a hardware or even software) to a
> specific computer brand, like Gateway.
>
> However, the card installed would most closely resemble the Xi-Fi
> Platinum. The technical specifications of the sound card is on the link
> below.
>
> Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card Technical Specifications:
> http://support.gateway.com/s/SOUND/6...03057sp2.shtml
>
>

Determine the part number on the card installed in your Gateway. With Creative,
the part numbers look like CTnnnn, where nnnn is a 4-digit number, and they are
marked right on the surface of the board. Sometimes, Creative puts a sticker
on the back of the card, too. Use the part number on the Creative web site to
find out more about it. Creative is fairly good about having info for its OEM
cards... Ben Myers

On Wed, 1 Aug 2007 17:25:04 -0400, "Steve Mavronis" <>
wrote:

>I just compared the X-Fi Platinum and XtremeMusic cards and the specs on
>both cards are identical. Only difference is the Platinum comes with the I/O
>Drive module for the drive bay. I don't know why Gateway says the below
>because it didn't come with that. So to me it would be more like the
>XtremeMusic product as packaged.
>
>"Steve Mavronis" <> wrote in message
>news:BsidnaEWJ-...
>> Response from Gateway tech support:
>>
>> After making a research, we found out that although the card may be
>> similar with the models available from Creative, the card does not comes
>> with the software that the retail version comes with.
>> The sound cards at the Creative website is a retail version; thus the
>> sound card on your FX530S is an OEM version. An OEM version is a
>> custom-built component (which can be a hardware or even software) to a
>> specific computer brand, like Gateway.
>>
>> However, the card installed would most closely resemble the Xi-Fi
>> Platinum. The technical specifications of the sound card is on the link
>> below.
>>
>> Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card Technical Specifications:
>> http://support.gateway.com/s/SOUND/6...03057sp2.shtml
>>
>>