A cheaper PCIe based X-Fi Titanium has appeared on Creative's Website, although the company doesn't seem to have issued a press release about this new card. It appears that it's the same as the X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro, but without the Fatal1ty branding and the fancy EMI shield.

Creative also seems to have removed the X-RAM, which seems to be a feature that you have to pay a hefty premium for, and we're not sure how Creative is ever going to gain any support from the software developers when only a very limited range of its X-Fi products support it.

What you do get is EAX HD Advanced 5.0, CMSS-3D, Dolby Digital Live encoding, 7.1-channel analog outputs, optical S/PDIF in and out, and a copy of PowerDVD with DTS ES and Dolby Digital EX support. We're not sure how popular this card will, as if you're a gamer, you're more likely to go for the Fatal1ty Pro version, at least if you play any of the games that support X-RAM.

At US$99.99 (we're still waiting for official European pricing), it's $50 cheaper than the Fatal1ty Pro, which is a steep premium to pay for 64MB of X-RAM and an EMI shield, but without those features, we have a feeling that that X-Fi Titanium might not appeal to a huge market, especially as you can get the older PCI X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Professional for the same price and reap the benefits of having X-RAM and the X-Fi Crystalizer, which the X-Fi Titanium also seems to lack.

You can find the product page here.