wow and creative alchemy

[tekjunkie28]

I have win 7 64 bit with a creative titanium soundcard, on the creative website is says that i have to run wow in win xp service pack 2 compatibility mode for it to function. I need to know if its even needed anymore as the game specs have changed significantly since cata. So is the game still directsound and if so should i run it like that and enable it in the creative alchemy program.

[Skeeter]

I have a creative x-fi titanium and I am curious of this as well. I think from what I understand WoW loses hardware acceleration and environmental audio effects in windows vista/7 that can be restored if you enable Alchemy? Alchemy gives me the option for WoW but do you still need to run compatibility mode for XP Service Pack 2 for it to work? And if you are using xp sp2 Dx11 won't work right?

[Deleted]

As far as I know - WoW no longer uses EAX (removed in 2.2?), thus Alchemy should have no effect. It should (I imagine) have OpenAL compatibility instead, and Windows Vista and Windows 7 have native support for this - thus Alchemy is no needed.

[Töasty]

I have had to use Alchemy and also run wow in windows xp sp3 mode, otherwise wow does not detect hardware acceleration.

1/27 02:26:33.068 - Requested 64 channels.
1/27 02:26:33.098 - Sound Driver Reports: 0 Hardware Channels Available.
1/27 02:26:33.098 - ########################################################################################## #
1/27 02:26:33.122 - # NOTICE: Insufficient Hardware Channels Available.
1/27 02:26:33.134 - # World of Warcraft Requires At Least 12 Hardware Channels to Function in Hardware Mode.
1/27 02:26:33.146 - ########################################################################################## #
1/27 02:26:33.146 - ########################################################################################## ######
1/27 02:26:33.175 - #### Failed to init with user settings. Attempting to init using the most compatible settings...
1/27 02:26:33.188 - ########################################################################################## ######

[Deleted]

Creative's drivers are bull**it and the developers should be imprisoned for life and given only maggots to eat. If you don't absolutely need the fancy effects and control panels, try uninstalling all Creative drivers and let windows fetch drivers of its own and see if it works any better.

Mod Edit: Watch the language.

[Asera]

Windows won't fetch drivers for an X-Fi card. You have to use Creative's

Running an X-Fi Xtremegamer and having no trouble with hardware acceleration WITHOUT Alchemy.

[Sotos]

Creative's drivers are bull**it and the developers should be imprisoned for life and given only maggots to eat. If you don't absolutely need the fancy effects and control panels, try uninstalling all Creative drivers and let windows fetch drivers of its own and see if it works any better.

I normally keep my (inner) rage to myself, but I have to agree with the poster here. I built a whole system around EAX and Creative for BF2 and BF2142. You actually got one of the games with the sound card. Anyway after about 2 or 3 days of fantastic sound my PC would crash with looping sound. After 7 million different tests, installs, reinstalls, driver updates, hardware updates and selling Creative my soul I was informed I should not be using that card for that game as they were currently no compatible.

However as Asera said windows will not search for the X-fi drivers.

Unless you are acutally having issues I would leave it alone. After all the issues I have had I would definitely stick to the old adage: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

[FlawlessSoul]

Creative have always been terrible at providing support. If the X-Fi Ti I have hadn't been cheap, I wouldn't have bothered. But I also needed a card with an optical input so /shrug.