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The ASUS Xonar D2X is one of the jewels in the crown of the Asus company, makers of top end sound cards, high flying mainboards and other quality computer products brings you another winner in the ASUS Xonar D2X sound card. The card is truly multi-talented and has multiple facets that makes it quite literally among the best of the sound cards that Asus has put out, or nearly any of the competing companies as well.

When it comes to the performance the D2X really shines though as completely impressive. It’s in fact probably better than most of the other cards in the same category for more than one reason. The Signal to noise ratio of the Xonar D2X is really quite low and offers you a clean crisp sound that makes music, gaming, or television a real pleasure to listen to using the Xonar.

The Input and the output of the D2X is in the 118 range, which makes it a fairly impressive little card at a really great price. There is a slightly higher rate of distortion than you’re going to find in the other ASUS card as well as the Claro Plus, but it’s about a thousandth so it’s a fairly safe bet for us to say that you’re not really going to see the difference.

The real area where the Xonar D2X is going to shine for you is the response range. The Xonar has it all over the Claro when it comes to the frequency and the range of response. The Asus kicks it out starting at about 10 Hz and taking it up to 46 khz, which is literally imperative when you want to really hear those pounding lows and the high-pitched highs in your home theater or gaming experience.

The sample rate and the resolution aren’t really in question at a 24 bit at 192 and it compares favorably with literally every other card that it comes into contact with. The Claro Plus may be just a touch below it but the two are quite closely aligned and in this aspect of the sound card it’s virtually neck and neck.

The I and O on the Xonar D2X are somewhat less impressive than the full featured Claro Plus and it is missing some of the best ports that will help you such as the front audio. That’s not really a huge deal breaker on this one because of the great sound and the good price, but it is just a slight irritant when it comes to wanting to switch out on the speakers and the headphone and use both at a different time.

All in all the Asus Xonar D2X is a relatively remarkable sound card for a really super price. That’s something we’re all looking for.

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• HT Omega Claro Plus+ Sound Card Review
• ASUS Xonar Essence STX Virtual 7.1 Sound Card Review

Overall Rating:

Omega is a company which is based in California and has been in the business of making sound cards and other computer parts for years. They were also one of the first card companies to bring out a quality sound card that offered 24-bit sound performance. The Omega company tends to get outstanding reviews for their products but primarily is a real hit for their customer service. The company makes outstanding quality sound cards, however this sound card is not the top products in this price range.

The HT OMEGA Claro Plus has one quite serious flaw, that being that the range is only about 15Hz to 40HZ and most top range sound cards tend to not go under the twenty range. The HT Omega Claro offers an outstanding sound the lows aren’t as low and the highs aren’t quite as high, meaning that the rich full tones that you want for your home theater probably aren’t going to be in this beauty, although the price is certainly right and the sound is relatively good.

HT Omega Claro Plus

The human ear can hear down to the 10hz and up to the 42hz range, which means that your sound card is not going to go down as low as you can, or up as high as your ear can. The richness isn’t going to be as on the money as it will be with a card that gives you those figures. That being said, the Claro still performs well and has a remarkable SNR or signal to noise ratio and has some decently low levels of distortion on the car so the audio is going to be fairly crisp and clean for you. Much like the Asus Duo, the Claro can handle literally anything.

In addition to this, the sample rates are outstanding at a 192 Khz and the HT Omega takes full marks for the wide and diverse array of IO ports that you’re going to find. It has in fact, many more than nearly any other card that we’ve seen. The headphone ports are there, the microphone ports, the card also offers you an outstanding four different 3.5 ports for use in connection of your surround sound, something none of us can live without these days.

It also offers you a combination port to connect up coax or optical cable and a way to connect your AV receiver when you’re ready to do so, which means that you’re going to have all that you need to connect to virtually anything and not have to add any extras.

An added bonus, the card is a PCI, which means that it’s a little less trouble to work with in many cases for those who are going to be using other connections through PCIe. While it may not have all the little extras that you’re finding in the Asus or other top range sound cards, for the price that you’re paying you are getting a top notch, long lasting quality sound card for a very good price.

[phpbay]ASUS Xonar DX, 32, “44980″, “”[/phpbay]

• Asus Xonar D2X Sound Card Review
• ASUS Xonar Essence STX Virtual 7.1 Sound Card Review

Overall Rating:

The world of computers has a few well-known and top-notch players. Of those, Asus is in the rankings as a quality company who offers cost effective computer parts such as sound cards and main boards. The Asus XONAR Essence is a top performing cost effective audio card that is in the middle of the lower costing sound cards.

The performance of the Asis Xonar Essence has what’s called a 24-bit/192kHz and that’s true for all across the board, meaning that it’s a fairly safe bet to figure that the same will hold true of multi channel as well as stereo play, while the S PDIF won’t have any statistics since that’s not an available option for you.

ASUS Xonar Essense STX

There are a couple other very interesting aspects of the Asus XONAR Essence, among them that the distortion is quite low and hangs out at about 0.0003% when it comes to the output and an input of about 0.0002%. By comparison it really outdoes the others in the same price and frequency range, and also offers you the means to make it perform even better, although you do risk the card damage if you’re not right on the money with your methods.

With a serious range of ports available to you, the Xonar works out well for nearly any home theater and will give you a quality sound for a reasonable price as well as not needing a lot of extras for the connection. With adaptors standard you also don’t need to put out any extra cash to get the job done, you can add the Asus Xonar Essence sound card to your computer or your home theater system and get the quality performance and the great sound that you want for a fraction of what you might like to pay.

The bottom line for one of the under two hundred dollar sound cards, the Asus Xonar Essence sound card really outperforms the competition in multiple ways. You’re getting a quality card for a decent price that is fit for gaming or theater performances.

[phpbay]ASUS Xonar Essence, 32, “44980″, “”[/phpbay]

• Asus Xonar D2X Sound Card Review
• HT Omega Claro Plus+ Sound Card Review

Overall Rating:

Here comes the ATI Radeon HD 5970 beast, the flagship of the ATI Radeon 5000 series. This is the most anticipated graphic card by many gamers. Its beast performance is always proven in all benchmarks, leaving the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480, as well as the other graphic cards far behind. There is another 400 series card coming up soon to compete with the 5970, but as this review is written no Nvidia’s 400 series card could match ATI Radeon HD 5970 superiority. Nvidia need to be able to keep pace with the challenge otherwise it may lose some ground when the graphic card is moving to the next generation.

AMD ATI Radeon hdHD 5970

GPU/Interface

A dual core graphics card is relatively new idea but like Nvidia’s GTX 295, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 is made of this latest technology. With the dual core performance, only pair of 5870s or GTX 480s can outmatch it but it is not cost effective.

Having a dual core graphics card effectively means that you have a dual card (CrossfireX) system, but 5970 is even better because everything is in one card with every single attribute doubled. Here is one simple example – the clock speed is now running at 725 x 2 MHz which is 1450 MHz.

This architecture accommodates 3200 stream processors in this card, producing 116 GTs texture pixels and fill rates of 46.4 GPs and to help increase the frames per second (FPS), thus giving you better video rendering experience and a smooth gaming.

Video Memory

Having GDDR5 video memory, the stock configuration has an impressive frequency of 1.0GHz x 4. They are nonetheless, rated at 1.25GHz operation, thus gives you ample room for overclocking. The enormous 2GB capacity on this card should require less of your RAM usage and it also contributes to an extra speed.

Supported API

AMD is very quick at grabbing opportunity. When Windows 7 was released along with DirectX 11, it quickly jumped on the bandwagon. The reason is simple, AMD understands that the Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards’ best features are with the presence of DirectX 11 support.

Rendering Technologies
The HD 5970 is capable of supporting up to 2560 x 1600 resolution on not single monitor, but three monitors, thanks to AMD’s Eyefinity technology. This technology is also available in the other 5000 series cards but only the 5970 has real potential.

Additional Features

In term of size this HD 5970 is quite large even when it is compared to other dual GPU cards. Its physical dimension is about 12 inches long, about an inch and a half tall and nearly 4 inches with the weight sitting at around 3.5 pounds, making it one of the heaviest graphic cards.

The GPUs itself is a huge aluminum heatsink made up of 36 fins and it cover almost half of the graphic card. The heatsink helps to cool down the GPUs and the integrated memory as well. Coupled with the presence of the highly heat conductive copper plate at the bottom, the efficiency is much improved when it is designed this way.

The Radeon HD 5970 is a monstrous graphics card and draws a considerable amount of energy and it but it seems the additional GPU requires a little more power drawn from a 8-pin and 6-pin pair of PCI Express power connectors. Dual 6-pin connectors have been the most common standard for single GPUs. Please take note of this fact because it will help you to get a compatible power supply.

Summary

Simply put, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 rules the graphics cards’ world, beating NVidia hands down. The competition between these two parties has long gone back in time and competition is ongoing when both trying hard to outdo and grab top spot. It seems, for the time being the tides have turned in favor of AMD.

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