Xonar vs X fi

Peter450

Peter450

Peter450

Associate
Joined
26 Jan 2008
Posts
557
X-Fi Xtreme Gamer 7.1 and Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express Sound Card, there both about 50 quid

Which one is considered the better option, i think i am going to stick with xp over vista as i mainly game on my pc and games performance under vista seems quite a few frames per second behind XP in most benchmarks
 
I've had both an X-Fi XtremeMusic and a Xonar D2. Xonar sound quality is better, particularly for music, but I found the X-Fi easier to use for gaming (more games worked on highest sound settings without having to mess with soundcard settings etc).

Both are great sounding cards.

If you were thinking of moving to Vista I would certainly recommmend the Xonar over the X-Fi (I had problems with my X-Fi in Vista). On XP it's closer.
 
Last edited:
Thanks Uriel, what are the advantages of vista over XP? most of the reviews for hardware and stuff (reading up on various bits for a new build) had XP performance quite a bit ahead of vista, i was originally going to get vista but seeing as the performance in games (main thing for me really) seems to lag XP quite a bit i was going to stay on XP
 
I have both XP and Vista installed. I've not really used XP for several months and Vista is definitely my preferred OS. Vista's main advantage for gaming is DX10, which allows some games to run on higher settings (still not many but this will increase in future - if you have a DX10 capable GPU).

I've had to tweak a lot of settings in Vista thugh. XP is more user friendly on a standard setup.

Vista performance in games has improved a lot recently. In many cases, particularly in recent games, it's on par with XP or even slightly faster. Of course this depends on hardware and drivers etc. Take a look here: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302500,00.asp
 
Last edited:
Same here though I have the Xonar D2x so music wipes the floor with the xfi cards :)
 
I've had lots of trouble recently getting Vista to install my X-fi drivers - I'm going to try the modded you pax drivers before throwing the towel in. Another vote for the Xonar from me.
 
The D2x has burr brown DACs for the analogue output stage and has some other differences. I don't think the D1 series has the EAX5 emulation does it? whilst the D2/x does.
 
Uriel said:
Vista's main advantage for gaming is DX10, which allows some games to run on higher settings (still not many but this will increase in future - if you have a DX10 capable GPU).
Click to expand...
Yeah, right...
http://www.pureoverclock.com/story1585.html

There is a huge upgrade in image quality coupled with the obvious framerate drop. Every DX10 effect seems to be present and the game is a lot more playable than under Vista.
So Crytek basically greyed out the very high options under XP, simply because they and their buddies in the industry want us to buy the worthless resource hog that Vista is...
http://www.crysis-online.com/forum/index.php?topic=11837.0

What a surprise that later part...
Wouldnt' be surprised if also other "DX10" games are similar.
 
ive had the X-Fi Platinum - Fatal1ty Champion Series and the Xonar d2x and the xonar is loads better ive read some reviews of the cheaper xonar and i think w3bbo did a review on it @ oc3d its an amazing card for the price if i was buying a soundcard for around £50 it would be the xonar

@EsaT xp is a dead os now.. stop fighting it it looks crap vista is loads better now once you have the hardware to run it right its loads better than xp
 
I had the x-fi fatal1ty then moved up to the Xonar D2X now. World of improvement now, I would never go back to the x-fi again. This hiss has gone completely, and audio quality is far better now. I mostly use dedicated cd players for listening, but with the Xonar, if I can't be bothered loading any cds that evening, I am content to use my PC as source which I would never have done with the x-fi card.
 
EsaT said:
Yeah, right...
http://www.pureoverclock.com/story1585.html

There is a huge upgrade in image quality coupled with the obvious framerate drop. Every DX10 effect seems to be present and the game is a lot more playable than under Vista.
So Crytek basically greyed out the very high options under XP, simply because they and their buddies in the industry want us to buy the worthless resource hog that Vista is...
http://www.crysis-online.com/forum/index.php?topic=11837.0

What a surprise that later part...
Wouldnt' be surprised if also other "DX10" games are similar.
Click to expand...

And what's your point? Vista has DX9 too and with SP1 and latest drivers Vista does that on par with XP or faster.
 
xonars are great cards, but they need to address these little problems that people are having. mine will occasionally swap the center and lfe channel around and when you get midrange through your big subwoofer its loud as hell and not nice. thats very frustrating. peopel are also having problems with sound in some apps, particularly if that app crashs and doesnt close down correctly, it can cause an infinite sound loop that cant be fixed without restarting the pc.

to be perfectly honest though, i dont think theres a single card out there that ticks all the boxes and still remains 100% stable. they are still far better than the x-fi's, stablilty and quality-wise
 
My main Xonar problem is having to remember whether DS3D-GX is supposed to be on or off for games. If it's left on, it messes up surround sound in newer games and if it's off you're can only get stereo on most older games in Vista.

I found Alchemy much easier to use, as you just set up a profile for each game and you didn't need to change it again.

The other issue is that higher levels of EAX still aren't enabled in several games. I'm aware of Rome: Total War, Thief: Deadly Shadows and Call of Duty 2 so far. Hopefully Asus will sort these out in future drivers.

Edit: All of these are fairly minor issues compared to the problems I had with my X-Fi in Vista. I have to say, the X-Fi always behaved itself in XP though.
 
On xp the x-fi is fine, on vista I wouldn't go near an X-fi with a 10 foot barge pole.
It's quite annoying really that there's still so little choice with sound cards I wish other manufacturers would start making them.
Even though you are on xp i would say get the xonar still because it's newer tech.
 
Last edited:
What settings is everyone using on their Xonar ?

I read today the SVN button enables normalisation of all sources which is a great feature as I have many movies and music where the audio is quieter than the rest of the movies/music I have so no longer find myself having to adjust volume on my amp to suit.

I also read the "Hi-Fi" mode bypasses the DSP which is great for those who leave Tone Defeat enabled on their amps, muscial purists :p

Here's my settings at the mo:

xonar.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom