Just a few years ago, if someone said that integrated audio would deliver great performance with many of the features of a full-blown add-in card, it might have raised an eyebrow or two.  Today, however, thanks to vastly improved integrated technologies, today's integrated audio solutions are often

Very Good Audio Reproduction; Excellent surround-sound and spatial positioning performance; Good Gaming Performance; EAX 5.0 Support

Limited CPU off-load benefits; Skimpy Documentation; Lite Retail Bundle

From my testing, it's clear to see that ASUS' Xonar DX pushes the performance envelope for a value-oriented card, offering most but not all of the performance of the audiophile-quality Xonar D2 and D2X cards – call it Xonar Lite, if you will.

Superb clarity and fidelity; Great performance for music and movies; Low-profile design provides flexibility; Affordable

Hit-or-miss gaming performance; Requires external power supply

Last year Asus released the first model of its Xonar series or sound cards, the Xonar D2. The taiwanese company continued the line up last February with the introduction of the Xonar DX.

I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear that sound cards have started getting interesting again after years of a boring one horse race. It wasn't too long ago when we looked at the – the PCI-Express x1 version of the original D2.

ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-E Sound Card Review Featuring Manufacturers Part#: XONAR DX Price: Click here to compare prices Availability: In Stores Now Product Page: XONAR DX Warranty: 1yr. Manufacturers The current soundcard landscape offers many options to the PC audio enthusiast.

Price point; Overall impressive sound; GX 2.0

Generic Opamps; Small bundle; No DTS features; Some minor sound issues

Amazing increase over on-board sound (and my old Audigy SE). My speakers (Z-5500) and headphones (Senn 595's) have far clearer sound and what seems to be more bass! Everything is just clear as day.

Asus have long been a leader in producing high quality, reliable hardware and components. Testament to this fact is that Asus are a ‘Tier 1' manufacturer for Intel's current chipset/motherboard offerings are also among the top manufacturers of both ATI and Nvidia based graphics cards along with...

• Fantastic overall sound; • Very good looking card; • Solid capacitors for durability; • Front panel connectivity; • PCIe functionality

• Lack of DTS encoding capabilities; • Requirement of additional floppy power cable; • Lack of prompt driver updates preventing some games (Bioshock) from working correctly

My greatest concern was - will this sound card work with my xp64. Other cards I purchased in the past would not. This sound card advertised that it will work with xp64 and in fact it does. I have it connected to my Pioneer Elite 7.1 - wow.

Was upgrading my kids PC. They listen to a lot of music and play a lot of games on their machine, decided to put in a sound card for better quality and (in theory) a little less CPU utilization. This was the perfect choice in terms of price and performance.

Low profile; sound quality an improvement over motherboard option; affordable alternative to Creative cards

None

I shall be short. Tech specs are not bad. Or at least were not bad, when card came out. Dobly Surround 7.1 It had bells and whistles, like hardware accelerated 3D sound extensions. Digital output. It has 24kbit and sample rate of whooping 192000, which is pretty cool.

Cheap; Linux friendly; PCI Express X1

Requires floppy connector; rather unstable inside motherboard