Asux Xonar dx2 versus Creative Elite Pro

[impactdax]

I want a high end card. I'd like opinions on these two cards.

1. I want to use surround sound headphones and speakers at various times, but understand Asus requires you to unplug speakers in the back of computer to plug in headphones (major bummer). If I bought a good 5.1 system would any have a headphone jack passthrough that would not degrade sound quality. Or would an extension cable from the back of the card to the top of the computer where I plug and unplug the speakers/heaphone work? Would that degrade sound quality?

2. Should I care that Asus I cannot run EAX in Vista.

3. CPU utilization in reports shows ASUS as high as 30% in very use situation. Would Creative be any better? Especially considering that if I use EAX with would have to use drivers to convert to Open AL.

4. Is the exterior module on the Creative helpful or a pain?

I listen to a lot of music and play games.

 

[RyuGTX]

2. Asus D2X should be able to run EAX 1 and 2 in Vista with the latest drivers.

3. Creative cards have a lot lower CPU utilization.

 

[noxlord]

2. Asus D2X should be able to run EAX 1 and 2 in Vista with the latest drivers.

3. Creative cards have a lot lower CPU utilization.

A lot ? it's negligible. Moderns cpu's are barely affected by software audio.

 

[phide]

CPU utilization in reports shows ASUS as high as 30% in very use situation. Would Creative be any better? Especially considering that if I use EAX with would have to use drivers to convert to Open AL.

Call wrapping isn't a big deal. The big deal is buffer playback and mixing, which are both done on the 20K1 even through ALchemy.

4. Is the exterior module on the Creative helpful or a pain?

I don't really use mine. It isn't helpful or a pain, just useless (for me).

A lot ? it's negligible. Moderns cpu's are barely affected by software audio.

Depends on the voice count.

 

[young boy]

Just to confirm, the cpu utilization is the same among elite pro, fatality, XtremeGamer Fatality pro and XtremeGamer right? Are there any other card that have better utilization?

 

[young boy]

Just to confirm, the cpu utilization is the same among elite pro, fatality, XtremeGamer Fatality pro and XtremeGamer right? Are there any other card that have better utilization?

 

[jamesrb]

I had an X-Fi with the I/O drive. The only thing I ever used it for was to plug headphones into. If that is the only reason for wanting the X-fi, you should realize that the headphone output on the I/O drive had a worse DAC than the DAC on the card (lower quality sound).

With the Asus, you could put a switch box on the front channel output so you don't have to plug/unplug all the time.

 

[Brian48]

I have both the Xonar D2 and X-FI ExtremeMusic. The Xonar is in my Vista 64 box right now, while the X-FI was regulated to my No. 2 (WinXP) machine. By all my testings, it's slightly slower than the X-FI in gaming and admittedly does not sound quite as good with some game titles, but that does not make it bad gaming card. The performance hit is not noticable at all in actual gameplay and its still sounds pretty darn good in it's own right. It also makes up for itself in other areas. Music and DVD playback are noticable better. This is not to say the X-FI is bad at music or DVDs either. Just that each card has a slight edge over each other.

The one area where the Xonar is supposedly clearly better than higher end Elite Pro is for home theater application and also recording, but I'm not into both to comment.

FYI, I'm not one to bash Creative too much about their drivers, but the Asus is not 100% either. The one thing in Asus's corner however, is that they seem frequent with their updates (even it's just beta releases) and seem to really take an interest in developing new features for their customer base. The recent update to the DS3D GX 2.0 is a prime example, even if it's still beta. Don't hold your breathe expecting the same treatment from Creative.

 

[Hard911]

have you ever consider Auzentech Prelude? I have Elite Pro, Auzentech Prelude and X-Meridian and I know Xonar is using the same chipset C-Media as X-Meridian. I hate that fact that Creative is so bad on drivers so I have to tell you to stay away from Creative, Elite Pro comes with breakout box with remote control which is really nice but you can't use remote control anymore with Vista, not only that but no support Dolby Digital or DTS for Vista when using SPDIF. I was pissed at Creative about drivers which makes me sick!! You can decide on either Xonar or Prelude, Auzentech is very good with drivers and DDL is awesome with games also swappable opamp so you can upgrade a better opamp to suit your taste, stock opamp is LM4562 which is very good, clean and clear sound with good midrange too so can't go wrong with Prelude, it has all the features of X-Fi chipset.