1x pci-e in a 4,8 or 16x slot?

[Helevitia]

The general consensus around the web is yes, but wanted to see if anyone here has first had experience before I do it?

[UtwigMU]

Some x4 and x8 RAID cards don't work in all x16 slots, you need to check for motherboard compatibility. G550 will probably work

[Jammrock]

The general consensus around the web is yes, but wanted to see if anyone here has first had experience before I do it?

In theory all PCIe cards are upwards compatible. Meaning an X1 can go into an X2, X4, X8, X16, x4 into x8 or x16, etc. The PCIe consortium designed like this on purpose. Though nothing is perfect, but as long as both motherboard and card are fully compliant it should work.

[Helevitia]

Thanks Jammrock

I plan to put my Asus Xonar D2x in my 8x slot since the card currently blocks one of my memory slots. You'd think this would have been a big problem when they were testing this combo out. Both 1x slots cause the same problem. This is on an Asus P5K Deluxe.

[Helevitia]

OK, the PCI-E 1x Xonar D2X works fine in the 8x slot currently. I'll let you guys know if I run into any problems once I start playing games and try other things

[Helevitia]

No problems with 3 games so far. Glad to know that this is doable. Now I can count all PCI-E slots as atleast 1 1x slot.

[Jammrock]

Ooohhhh, you'll have to tell us all about the Xonar. I finally retired my Audigy Platinum after nearly 10 years in use, so I'll be looking into a replacement in the near future.

[Helevitia]

It's really pretty to look at it The LED ports are a very nice touch. It requires a 4 pin power connector from your power supply. The smaller one that you would normally connect to a floppy drive. Obviously from my post above it can work in an 8x pci-e slot. I'm surprised they made the card so long that it prevents the first memory slot from being used.

I'm using Vista 64-bit. There is only one driver available for this card as of this writing. Everything installed fine without any problems.

It comes with PowerDVD, Ableton Live, and the Cakewalk suite. All lite versions. Both PowerDVD and Ableton live CD-keys were no where to be found, so I had to email support to get them. Cyberlink got back with me in 10 minutes with a new key! I was impressed to say the least. It was even 10pm at night. Ableton is in the UK I believe so I haven't heard from them yet.


The "Audio Center" that controls everything is somewhat nice to look at, but just like most Asus software(IMHO), it is not intuitive. Fortunately the manual is the best manual I have seen for a product in a long time and it walks you through everything, including the best way to setup all of the 3rd party software it comes with.

I am amazed by the amount of audio tweaking you can do with this card. There is so much it is overwhelming. If you have a 5.1 or 7.1 setup, you can really get the most out of this card. Dolby Digital and DTS functionality go way beyond anything I've ever used it for which is watching movies. Now you can have all different kinds of listening scenarios. For example, I can output my 2 channel MP3 song into my 5.1 setup but have it virtually sound like it is coming out of a 7.1 setup while adjusting the center width for voice(meaning I can make the voice sound more like it is coming out of the center speaker of spread the voice out further into more speakers) and I can change the "dimension" which is basically balancing the front to rear speakers.

The downside is that almost everything needs to be setup manually. This means that anytime you want to play a game, watch a movie, listen to music, you need to manually change settings. I ugess you could theoretically leave the card in a "default" mode but then you lose out on so much.

There is a button you click for EAX games. It is called DS3D GX. Basically this allows you to play any EAX 2.0 or earlier games with true EAX support in Vista. As I mentioned earlier, you will need to manually click this button and then click it again when you are finished with your game. Here is where I ran into my first software problem. The game I play the most, TrackMania: United, doesn't seem to sound right when I enable EAX support. So I guess the it's not perfect. I have played Crysis, Portal, and COD4 as well. Didn't have any problems with those games but I didn't specifically look to enable any kind of EAX either. I supposed it is enabled in Portal(all HL2 related games)

I haven't connected the card up to a receiver to test out the DD and DTS and probably never will.

What else can I tell you??? hmmm.....Oh, I know! There is software that allows you to rip your DRM mp3's to non-DRM mp3's. I was hoping I could use any source and "record" that sound but it doesn't work that way. It has to be a music file. It works with iTunes apparently but not in Vista, not sure why but that is what the manual says.

I really like the Volume Normalization feature. Just turn it on and everything is the same volume.

It has tons of other stuff like a 10-band EQ, DSP effects, Karaoke effects like removing the voice form a song, key shifting, mic echo, etc... It has an acoustic echo cancellation feature that prevents echos while using a mic with VOIP.

That's all I can think of for now. Feel free and ask me any questions. BTW, this card beats almost all soundcards on the market in RMAA. The tests speak for themselves. It supports up to 192KHz as well. It sounds great on my Klipsch 5.1 setup. Even the box it comes in is pretty If you are into recording, HTPC, games or listening to music with great opamps and great specs through headphones or nice speakers, this is the card to get.

One last thing, the PCI version of this card did horrible in the RMAA tests.

[Jammrock]

I saw the tests between the Prelude Xfi and the two Xonars. It was interesting for sure.

You did forget one thing though ... how does it sound

[Helevitia]

I purposely didn't really talk about how it sounds since it varies from person to perron From my ears, I would say it sounds "cleaner" than the onboard audio. Definitely has better highs that are much crisper. Adding in dolby or dts effects greatly enhances the sound IMHO. I guess I like the rich sounding, atmospheric feeling I get from having 5 speakers hitting me at once. My headphones broke so I can't put on a pair and test that out.

[Jammrock]

I've seen the technical comparison, so "from your ears" is what I wanted