Vista 64 and good sound card

[stopthekilling77]

Well I'm upgrading my rig to a Phenom II setup, and I'm going with Gigabyte's GA-MA790X-UD4 motherboard, which has an onboard 8-channel Realtek ALC889A audio chipset. I've been using ASUS' SupremeFX sound card (8-channel ADI 1988B) with my ASUS P5N32-E SLI board since August '07 and I REALLY don't want to step backwards from the sound quality as my speakers are getting an upgrade as well (very fortunate timing on this actually, they JUST started crackling this past week, right before I did my taxes)

The deal is this: I could just use the same card in my new system. The Vista 64-bit drivers are just fine, but the card is not surround sound... something I'd like to upgrade to. I've read up on the one PCIE audio card on newegg that's in my "well, I COULD splurge on it for that price" price range, the ASUS Xonar DX 7.1 sound card and it looks like it plays nice with 64-bit drivers for Vista.

Got any thoughts? For me being the music junkie I am, I really know too little about sound cards and sound quality on PCs. I just need a good, solid sound card with surround sound capability so I can start looking for a good set of speakers.

As usual, I accept all your thoughts on this topic!

And for your visual displeasure..... the speaker setup I've been using since '05! Some RCA speakers and a Sony receiver lol

[The Flying Pig]

I've been using the X-Fi Titanium (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829102019) and it is splendid when you enable the surround for music/entertainment mode.
I think its probably more expensive than the Xonars, but I know it works with surround well.
(I haven't even switched over to digital yet.. still running on analog 5.1 with the 3 3.5mm cables going into my sound card )

[FZ1]

I've been using the X-Fi Titanium (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829102019) and it is splendid when you enable the surround for music/entertainment mode.
I think its probably more expensive than the Xonars, but I know it works with surround well.
(I haven't even switched over to digital yet.. still running on analog 5.1 with the 3 3.5mm cables going into my sound card )

Same here.

[DMB2000uk]

The Xonar's are good cards from what I've read and seen of them, so it won't by any means be a step down if you decide to go with that.

Dan

[Tech_Greek]

I've been using the X-Fi Titanium (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6829102019) and it is splendid when you enable the surround for music/entertainment mode.
I think its probably more expensive than the Xonars, but I know it works with surround well.
(I haven't even switched over to digital yet.. still running on analog 5.1 with the 3 3.5mm cables going into my sound card )

I use the X-Fi Platinum and the software solution is great, and even includes Alchemey which fixes broken EAX games in Vista (because MS changed the audio api around or something along those lines).

I'd go back and buy one with ram on board if I had a little extra money to spend at the time, why not?

[stopthekilling77]

For the time being, I'm just going to go with onboard sound as I'm upgrading to watercooling