It's been a couple of years now since ASUS first launched their Xonar series of sound cards, with the excitement and anticipation which led up to said release proving to be largely justified, giving another injection of interest to a discrete sound card market which has burgeoned over recent years. 

A notable difference compared to the onboard sound. Like other have mentioned, download the drivers from the Asus website and installation will be a breeze.

This card has been well reviewed by users elsewhere, but for me it was a bit of a disaster. In fact, of the two serious problems I had with it the fact that it just plain didn't work was the less serious one; it failed to plug 'n' play, didn't show up in control panel and device manager could see...

I have used this card in a few customer builds. They have all been more than satisfied. In the 50 dollar price range, this is the upgrade to get when going from onboard audio. This card is certainly not audiophile grade, but is more than enough for the average user wanting better than onboard.

Sound quality for price; and ability to upgrade opamp section

None

I've been using creative soundcards for the past 10 years and thought time for a change after I was not pleased with their last fatality1 card. As soon as I plugged this baby in, the sound was way way different.

Sounds fantastic, high fidelity mode disables every sound effect for true audio replication, swappable output operation amplifiers. GUI could be cleaner and more intuitive (I had to Google some of its button functions).

Very pleased with sound quality: significant improvement on onboard sound output. Works well with a Behringer pre-amp for digitising vinyl. Installation cd not much use (no WIndows 7 recognition.

Also don't play games using this card, the drivers are so terrible in that it likes to make them crash and indefinitely stutter the sound... If it doesn't make your computer Blue Screen.

If you're down and out on audio devices; grab it

Don't ever raise the volume above 50% or you'll make your ears bleed