X-Fi Titanium Fatality or Asus Xonar D2X/XDT/A?

[fps_dean]

My experience with Creative's recent sound cards have been like many others: POP! POP! POP! POP! BLUE SCREEN!

I'd highly advise NOT buying anything from Creative because you never know if you will have some conflict or not, and they do not update their drivers. As it stands right now, the last update for the X-Fi drivers (not software) was when they made a Vista version of the driver. The last update for XP was when the card was relased in 2005, and back then, Nvidias forceware version 77.77 worked fine with the X-Fi, but later Nvidia graphics drivers did not.

I replaced my X-Fi with a Xonar D2 and did not look back. No pops or periodic blue screens and the sound quality is ten times better as well. I wouldn't be too concerned about hardware acceleration with a sound card - it's pretty much a myth as the benefits are so very minor anyway to be completely honest. And as for EAX effects, the Xonar will now play anything the X-Fi will while sounding a lot better doing it.

The PCI-E cards are just PCI cards with a PCI-E bridge crossover card installed, so get whatever is cheaper.