Motherboard: ABIT KN9 Ultra (NForce 570 MCP-55).With the Xonar D2 and D2X, it seemed ASUS had figured out the key to performing well in this test, endowing their cards with excellent input stages, so I’ve also taken the liberty of routing the X-Fi XtremeGamer’s output through the Xonar D2’s exceptionally clean input stage for one test, for a more direct comparison between the high-end cards. This isn’t a perfect test – for one, it’s highly dependent on the quality of the card’s input stage as well as its output stage. To examine the audio performance characteristics of each card, the test of choice when laboratory-grade testing equipment isn’t available is the ‘loopback’ test, where the analog output from the card’s front left and right channels is routed through the card’s line-in jack. Audio TestingĪnd now we dive into the testing portion of the article, with a look at the audio performance of the Xonar DX compared with two other cards: the Xonar D2 and the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty XtremeGamer Professional Edition. Games that use OpenAL to handle their audio calls, however, don’t have any trouble under Vista with either manufacturer’s cards. Another important point to mention – ASUS touts significantly better support for EAX 5.0 functionality under Windows Vista than Creative’s own solution, which relies on a translator program for DirectSound calls (Creative ALchemy) to replace the Hardware Abstraction Layer, a design feature of Windows 2000 and XP that was removed in Vista.

Asus xonar dg audio driver windows 10