Hi well i want to know which of these sound cards ASUS Xonar Essence STX and Creative Sound Blaster ZxR are in 7.1?
Also i am bit confused in which to buy i plan on using it for gaming and watching hd movies so which one is the best?
I have a question about which one has optical out?
Which is the best sound cards out of these two?
neither is 7.1. the zxr is 5.1 like chaosophy says and the stx is stereo. the zxr can do 5.1, has a "dbpro", an "acm", and a native pcie chipset (which may account for its higher snr). the native chipset might improve quality due to producing less jitter, but it's unlikely to be audible. but they both use the same opamps, headphone amp, and dacs, as well as nichicon fg capacitors. apples and more expensive apples... £80 more expensive in fact!
also it's not worth spending this money on a sound card if your speakers aren't up to task. your speakers or headphones should be at least as expensive as the sound card. any less and you should be looking at £50-70 cards like the xonar d2x or creative z instead.
edit: having said all this, if you want to use optical you need to know two things. 1. optical quality isn't affected by the sound card quality. 2. optical can't transmit true 7.1 signals. what are you connecting the sound card to?