New sound card - Vista 64 - Budget £60ish

BenJ

BenJ

BenJ

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Joined
10 Aug 2006
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704
Location
Warrington
Currently have a basic Creative Audigy 4 OEM, its pretty dated and a pain with windows vista. I've heard good things about the asus xonar cards have been looking at the:

Asus Xonar DX 7.1 PCI-Express Sound Card (Low Profile Compatible) - Retail

Just a few questions:

1) Will this fit in my Gigabyte P35C DS3R mobo alongside a Geforce 7900GTX?
2) Is it the best card for vista 64 in my price range?

Thanks
 
The second pci-e slot (the smaller slot) is only just clear of the graphics cards heatsink. Is it a good idea to put the sound card this close to the graphics cards fan (practically restricting air intake)? Im beggining to wonder if I should go for the more expensive PCI version.
 
I've ordered one of these too, have the same motherboard and a HD3850 card. I'm hoping it'll fit in the PCIe slot just behind the graphics card, but the NB heatsink might get in the way, I don't know. There's always the second slot in front of the graphics card - the one not ENTIRELY covered by the graphic card heatsink.

Is it just me, or is it just poor design to have ALL the PCIe slots clustered around the graphics card slot? :confused:
 
Mine was good too - although unfortunately it suffered from shreiking capacitor's so is now in the process of an RMA return.

Apart from that i found the sound quality ok and the drivers to be stable in Vista64.

gt
 
I didnt notice the other pcie slot behind the card, SlyReaper it would be brilliant if you could you let me know if it fits in alright, with it being so close to the northbridge.

P.s. If I ordered it and found it wouldnt fit then can I send it back once the package has been opened?
 
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BenJ said:
I didnt notice the other pcie slot behind the card, SlyReaper it would be brilliant if you could you let me know if it fits in alright, with it being so close to the northbridge.
Click to expand...

It arrives Monday (later if I oversleep and don't take the delivery). I'll let you know how it goes. I do plan on sticking it in the slot behind the graphics card, but from pictures it looks quite long. Might catch the northbridge heatsink or even the RAM slots. If not, it'll have to go in front of the graphics card, **** up the airflow and catch on the southbridge heatsink and sata ports instead :D

Again: who was the genius at Gigabyte who thought it would be a good idea to cluster PCIe x1 ports around the PCIe x16 port?
 
Update.

I've just installed this card. It does indeed fit in the slot behind the graphics card on a GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard. Oh and it sounds bloody fantastic :D

One small point. If you're not using the red RAM slot, you'll need to push up one of the white clips in order for the sound card to fit. All this means is that if you want to install more RAM in that slot, you'll have to take the sound card out, put the RAM in, then put the sound card back in. A bit of a faff, but tolerable.

Edit: oh and BenJ, I'd PM you to let you know but I can't find the PM function on this forum :confused:
 
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Cheers fella, message recieved! Ill be ordering as soon as I have the funds :). Just one thing, does anyone know what the differences are between the (Other than the fact that they use different slots):

"Asus Xonar DX/XD 7.1 PCI-E Soundcard Low Profile"
"Asus Xonar D2 Ultra Fidelity 7.1 PCI Sound Card"
 
The D2 has something called an EMI shield (presumably stands for electro-magnetic interference). I've not noticed any distortion on the DX, so my guess it's more pretty than functional. There are probably a few technical differences too. But to MY ears, the sound is perfect on the cheap card.
 
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