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I have one of these cards, it's listed in the system in my signature.
I thought I'd start a thread dedicated to the card as it has a few issues, some of which I've mentioned in other threads here.
It's an expensive card, I paid £120.00 for it and it now sells for £140.00, here's a link:
Asus Xonar D2X
First off, let me say this is the sweetest sounding sound card I've ever used, I'm really pleased with the sound quality.
However, the highest quality sound card I've ever used prior to the Asus was a Creative X-Fi Audio which is the budget card in the X-Fi series and doesn't use a 'genuine' X-Fi chip, it's actually a glorified Audigy from what I can work out.
I'm using the Asus sound card with a 5.1 speaker set up, a Hercules XPS 5.100 set which were only briefly manufactured and are about five years old. With motherboard on board sound chip they sounded a bit crap, the Audigy 2 wasn't a lot better, the X-Fi Audio brought them alive and the Asus Xonar surprised the hell outta me, they sounded sweeeeeet.
So what's the issues?
Basically, so far I have discovered that at least three games won't work with the Asus Xonar:
1) Fallout 3
2) Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV
3) Call Of Juarez
I found out about Call Of Juarez tonight as I hadn't played it since installing the Asus soundcard. I started to play Call Of Juarez and almost from the start the game stuttered. Eventually the sopundcard went into oscillation and the game froze.
I used Task Manager to close the game down and then noticed all sound had gone, I had to reboot to get sound back again.
So that's the issue, so far I can't play three games with this soundcard.
The 2 games from the publisher Bethesda (Oblivion & Fallout 3) have been problematic in other areas with different setups that I've read about. Oblivion will actually work with the Asus Xonar for anytime up to two hours but will always crash eventually, sending the sound into oscillation and freezing the computer.
It's a shame about Call Of Juarez not working as with the patch the publisher issued it's one of the few games that uses DX10 and looks really very good indeed within Vista.
Asus have released three sets of drivers since the sound card's release, the latest one is a beta, I have that installed and it makes no difference with regards to the 3 games I've mentioned not working.
On the other hand, of the many games that work fine with the Asus Xonar are:
Call Of Duty 2, 4 & 5
Steam's Orange Box (HL2 et al)
Left For Dead
Grand Theft Auto 4
Timeshift
UT3
The Longest Journey
The Longest Journey Dreamfall
Bioshock
James Bond: Quantum Of Solace
Painkiller - all of them
GRID
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 & expansion packs x 2
NFS Most Wanted
NFS Underground 2
Halo 2
Assasin's Creed
And about six other games.
So why did I opt for an expensive Asus sound card?
Two main reasons:
1) Asus have served me well with their motherboards.
2) I dislike Creative.
Why do I dislike Creative?
Ignoring the fact they assume they have a monopoly on the Sound Card market, the main reason is this.
When Vista was released Creative declared lots of their soundcards were not compatible with Vista and therefore no drivers would be released.
Creative suggested that if Vista was your OS of choice to buy a newer X-Fi series card.
Then some maverick guy known only as Danny released some drivers he'd made himself that allowed some Creative sound cards (one of which was my X-Fi Audio card) to work within Vista.
Conclusion? Creative lied. They obviously had the wherewithall to creative drivers but instead of supporting loyal customers they wanted you to buy a new Creative card to replace your old one.
That really wasn't a very pleasant thing to do was it? So I put Creative on my crap list.
And bought the Asus card which brings me back to the whole subject of this thread: three of my games won't work with it.
Seems I have to pay a price for principles eh?
I will reiterate though: The Asus Xonar DX2, working through the pci-e bus, sounds excellent, it has given me a new dimension in some of my games, particularly with CoD WAW online.
I do have Fallout 3 and Oblivion loaded on another similarly specced computer so not all is lost (I actually finished Oblivion last night) but this situation is nevertheless irritating.
So there you go, if you're considering purchasing the Asus sound card or dislike Creative as much as I do, be aware of those incompatibility problems. If you're not going to play Call Of Juarez; Fallout 3 or Oblivion - no probs.
This has been a public service announcement
I will update this thread if any solutions are forthcoming, from whatever source.
I thought I'd start a thread dedicated to the card as it has a few issues, some of which I've mentioned in other threads here.
It's an expensive card, I paid £120.00 for it and it now sells for £140.00, here's a link:
Asus Xonar D2X
First off, let me say this is the sweetest sounding sound card I've ever used, I'm really pleased with the sound quality.
However, the highest quality sound card I've ever used prior to the Asus was a Creative X-Fi Audio which is the budget card in the X-Fi series and doesn't use a 'genuine' X-Fi chip, it's actually a glorified Audigy from what I can work out.
I'm using the Asus sound card with a 5.1 speaker set up, a Hercules XPS 5.100 set which were only briefly manufactured and are about five years old. With motherboard on board sound chip they sounded a bit crap, the Audigy 2 wasn't a lot better, the X-Fi Audio brought them alive and the Asus Xonar surprised the hell outta me, they sounded sweeeeeet.
So what's the issues?
Basically, so far I have discovered that at least three games won't work with the Asus Xonar:
1) Fallout 3
2) Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV
3) Call Of Juarez
I found out about Call Of Juarez tonight as I hadn't played it since installing the Asus soundcard. I started to play Call Of Juarez and almost from the start the game stuttered. Eventually the sopundcard went into oscillation and the game froze.
I used Task Manager to close the game down and then noticed all sound had gone, I had to reboot to get sound back again.
So that's the issue, so far I can't play three games with this soundcard.
The 2 games from the publisher Bethesda (Oblivion & Fallout 3) have been problematic in other areas with different setups that I've read about. Oblivion will actually work with the Asus Xonar for anytime up to two hours but will always crash eventually, sending the sound into oscillation and freezing the computer.
It's a shame about Call Of Juarez not working as with the patch the publisher issued it's one of the few games that uses DX10 and looks really very good indeed within Vista.
Asus have released three sets of drivers since the sound card's release, the latest one is a beta, I have that installed and it makes no difference with regards to the 3 games I've mentioned not working.
On the other hand, of the many games that work fine with the Asus Xonar are:
Call Of Duty 2, 4 & 5
Steam's Orange Box (HL2 et al)
Left For Dead
Grand Theft Auto 4
Timeshift
UT3
The Longest Journey
The Longest Journey Dreamfall
Bioshock
James Bond: Quantum Of Solace
Painkiller - all of them
GRID
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 & expansion packs x 2
NFS Most Wanted
NFS Underground 2
Halo 2
Assasin's Creed
And about six other games.
So why did I opt for an expensive Asus sound card?
Two main reasons:
1) Asus have served me well with their motherboards.
2) I dislike Creative.
Why do I dislike Creative?
Ignoring the fact they assume they have a monopoly on the Sound Card market, the main reason is this.
When Vista was released Creative declared lots of their soundcards were not compatible with Vista and therefore no drivers would be released.
Creative suggested that if Vista was your OS of choice to buy a newer X-Fi series card.
Then some maverick guy known only as Danny released some drivers he'd made himself that allowed some Creative sound cards (one of which was my X-Fi Audio card) to work within Vista.
Conclusion? Creative lied. They obviously had the wherewithall to creative drivers but instead of supporting loyal customers they wanted you to buy a new Creative card to replace your old one.
That really wasn't a very pleasant thing to do was it? So I put Creative on my crap list.
And bought the Asus card which brings me back to the whole subject of this thread: three of my games won't work with it.
Seems I have to pay a price for principles eh?
I will reiterate though: The Asus Xonar DX2, working through the pci-e bus, sounds excellent, it has given me a new dimension in some of my games, particularly with CoD WAW online.
I do have Fallout 3 and Oblivion loaded on another similarly specced computer so not all is lost (I actually finished Oblivion last night) but this situation is nevertheless irritating.
So there you go, if you're considering purchasing the Asus sound card or dislike Creative as much as I do, be aware of those incompatibility problems. If you're not going to play Call Of Juarez; Fallout 3 or Oblivion - no probs.
This has been a public service announcement
I will update this thread if any solutions are forthcoming, from whatever source.