We've become used to the regular release of new graphics chips but it's a far rarer occurrence when a new audio chip comes to market, and it's no surprise at all that Creative Labs is the company behind the new Sound Blaster X-Fi.

This is its first new audio chip since the Audigy 2 in 2002, which was a revision of the original Audigy from 2001. Audigy used 4.6 million transistors so it comes as something of a surprise to learn that Sound Blaster X-Fi is constructed with 51.1 million transistors. The chip is divided into five sections (Sample Rate Converter, Filter, Mixer, Tank and DSP) which are arranged in a configuration that Creative calls an Audio Ring.

Creative worked out the details of surround sound audio many years ago so the ten-fold increase in transistors and processing power is all about environmental audio. Audigy supported 64 internal audio channels and four simultaneous real time audio effects; the new X-Fi supports 4,096 channels and eight simultaneous effects.

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There are four products in the X-Fi range, which starts with the basic PCI card, the Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music, having a list price of £99.99 including VAT. It looks very basic as there is no Firewire port or optical S/PDIF. Instead you get four mini jacks of which three are for surround sound speakers, while the fourth is a FlexiJack which handles Digital In, Line In and Microphone functions.

You also get a 26-pin AD_Link connector which looks similar to a game port and which is used for connecting to the external Pro Elite I/O console that is available as an upgrade, no doubt for a small fortune. In some respects the Xtreme Music is a step backwards if you already own one of the Audigy family, and for that matter it's quite an expensive step backwards too.

The Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum sells for £149.99 and, like previous Platinum models, it has an I/O panel which is housed in an external 5.25-inch drive bay. This carries a full range of RCA, digital, MIDI and jack inputs and outputs. As with the Audigy it has a remote control unit but this has been updated and carries a large array of buttons as well as four controls that you roll with your thumb. The Platinum is a serious piece of kit which allows you to connect any type of speaker set-up that you choose, as well as other hardware such as a keyboard or mixer.

Then we come to the Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS which is aimed at the gaming market. It's a variant on the Platinum which carries 64MB of X-RAM memory and costs £179.99. The idea is fairly simple; most games load up the audio tracks in a compressed format such as OGG Vorbis to avoid taking up huge amounts of system memory. The CPU then decompresses and compresses the audio as necessary, and as we know some games are CPU limited while others are limited by the graphics card in your PC, so if you can reduce this audio load on the CPU then some games will show a rise in frame rate.

The X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS works in conjunction with the games software and Creative has produced a driver specifically for Doom 3 which shows a rise of up to ten frames per second. We like this idea but as with so many things only time will tell how broad the benefit will be. Put it this way; if you're a gamer who is considering buying the X-Fi Platinum then we reckon it's well worth the extra £30 to buy the Fatal1ty FPS.

And then we come to the Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro at £249.99 which uses the AD_Link to transfer the I/O features to an external I/O box. It's a large unit which measures 325 x 245 x 50mm so you might want to give some consideration to whether you'll be able to locate it near your PC.

The prime function of the Elite Pro unit is to give you easy access to the ports and controls but it also gives you raised audio quality as the Signal-to-Noise Ratio is 116dB compared to the 109dB SNR figure on the other three models. But the Elite Pro is very expensive and to our mind the I/O box is too large to be practical.

Creative has made huge strides forward with the Sound Blaster X-Fi but you'd have to be a serious gamer to spend the thick end of £200 on a sound card when most of us are content with decent integrated audio. On the other hand, games developers are likely to work with the X-Fi in mind, so we expect the X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS to become the standard for gaming PCs.