Wow... this is seriously the first I've heard of this apparently wide-ranging pack of issues with Creative's flagship X-Fi series. Good thing I didn't jump on that boat early...

"Today after many months, we did a little research to find out what has happened since then. We found out that only a few manufacturers have released BIOS updates to solve some of these issues. Creative has made a mysterious firmware upgrade that cannot be found on their website, and some users claimed it killed their card."