bit-tech Shopping: Asus Xonar D2X Sound Card

Rating: 10

Time with product: 1 Month

Strengths: Fantastic music sound quality with ordinary MP3s; doesn't crash 790i boards when you open web browsers

Weaknesses: Nowhere near the surround sound gaming performance of EAX 5.0 HD

Summary: I bought this to experiment with my sound options when Creative continuously failed to write drivers that would work properly on modern 790i motherboards when SLI is being used. (If you haven't heard, there are endless problems with clicking, crackling, snapping and sometimes terribly loud screeches using Creative cards in these setups. Creative blames the nVidia chipset and is apparently impotent to create a working driver that solves the issue.) Furthermore, my PCI Creative card would cause my system to BSOD or otherwise become unresponsive whenever I opened a web browser (if, e.g., I was listening to music at the same time). So I bought this Asus card having heard glowing reviews of its music performance, and it doesn't disappoint. This is the most fantastic music playback card I've ever heard, and even makes MP3s sound much better than Creative's Crystallizer. But it can't compare to Creative's EAX 5.0 HD surround sound for games, so I also bought a USB Creative product, which takes care of my games for me, and doesn't seem to be plagued by the problems that beset their PCI/PCI-X product line. I actually use both, taking the time to go into Device Manager and disable whichever one I'm not using, depending on whether I need to game, or listen to music. (Windows will eventually BSOD if you leave both enabled at the same time.) This Asus card CAN give an occasional click or pop, but that's rare during music playback. And it's too long for that top PCI-X1 slot on 790i motherboards; it will bump into either your northbridge cooler, or your nearest RAM slot release switch. You'll have to find a way to use that 2nd PCI-X1 slot, which might just mean modifying your top GPU to be a single-slot, liquid-cooled version (easily enough done, but you'll void your GPU's warranty). Finally, Asus chose to have the neat orange light shining down onto the next card in your PCI lineup, where no one could really see it, rather than illuminating the side Asus logo (which would look a lot better, especially in blue). But other than that, it sounds great, and I can recommend it for music listening.