Asus' new soundcard will easily cover the needs of gamers for 7.1 high quality audio. Comparing the Asus Xonar DX with the previous D2, the most noticeable difference is its lower retail price. DX's retail package is also less complete than its predecessor's since it includes just the essentials. The new card is also much smaller in volume. Other main differences are found at the chips the new Xonar uses.

The driver package includes the ASIO mode offering low latency modes, down to 2ms. We fired up Atomix Virtual DJ with keylock enabled and we noticed a CPU utilization of just 10%. In addition, the multiple available outputs is an advantage for all those who need a monitor function while DJing.. The windows driver pack also comes with several audio modes to play with. The included Asus PMP Lite software is a blazing fast WMA/MP3 encoder, although it doesn't use LAME libraries.

The performance of the DX audio card is also adequate. You won't notice many differences compared with the Asus Xonar D2 series, especially in the output dynamic levels. However, the Asus Xonar D2 has a lower output noise as it was expected. The RightMark Audio Analyzer v6.1.0 software gave an "Excellent" performance ranking, either at 16 or 24bit.

Although the majority of PC users may be happy with their onboard sound card, the Xonar DX could be attractive to gamers due to the provided support for the EAX extensions responsible for the sound effects of the latest games.

Overall a great, reasonably priced product for users who really need it.

Positive

• Low height design
• Full support with WDM and ASIO drivers
• Included Asus PMP encodes blazing fast WMA/MP3 files
• Dolby certified sound card
• Supports EAX extensions for games
• Windows control panel looks stable and complete
• ASIO drivers have down to 2ms latency
• No major problems detected during our tests
• Excellent test results with RMAA testing suite
• Low price, at least compared with Xonar D2 series
• Complete retail package with many cables and MIDI daughter card

Negative

• Requires external 4pin power to operate
• Retail package doesn't include any cable