I haven't really followed sound cards in quite some time. The one I have now is a sound audigy ZS 2 platnium and I'm fed up with creative and shit company/support.
The one I've been looking at has been the Asus D2X or whatever. Other than that I know nothing? Auzentech is supposed to make good cards too.
So I've been reading up on more sound cards and since I've grown to my headphones over my speakers due to the directional awesomeness, I've been reading quite a few reviews on the Razer sound card and they've yet to say anything negative about it yet. I don't know anyone who has it so I guess I'll be the first
Xonar D2X or the Xonar cards in general use high-quality components compared to the main competitor which would be the X-Fi and thus beats it in audio quality and also competes pretty well with the high-quality X-Fi that Auzentech created.
Creative as you probably know holds the license for a technology known as EAX and only outsourced EAX 2.0 while keeping 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 for their own cards (Audigy and X-Fi)
While the Xonar claims to handle up to EAX 5.0 it merely emulates it, still sounds great but it's not the same thing and many titles aren't fully compatible with this method so updated drivers are a must and Asus have been a bit slow. (As they've been working on other Xonar cards like the HD-AV and that other one.)
Thus you'll get problems in certain titles when trying to use the DX button to enable hardware acceleration and EAX compared to using a X-Fi and letting it handle things (With ALchemy for older titles or DirectSound titles like Fallout 3/Oblivion if needed assuming you use Vista.)
Check the Asus forums for more information, it's a great card with awesome audio quality but it's not perfect if you want EAX effects (Gaming and such.)
(I'm a bit bad at explaining but I hope this helps.)
Oh and driver vise Asus have a much better layout and control panel compared to the extremely "bloated" X-Fi driver which is a full bundle of various software.
(Might be useful in it's own way though as it does contain a lot of settings to tinker with.)
been reading about people having too many problems with asus's drivers which doesn't surprise me seeing as the quality of their motherboards is hitting rock bottom
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T PCIe
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