Sound card help

[Doom5003]

Hi everyone.
I have a Gigabyte Z77x UD3 and was wondering are the onboard sound quality great/good or do you think I should invest in a better sound card. Please give me a few options if you think I should look into a better sound card. My budget is about R1000. And I have a CM Siren s 5.1 headset and I am a gamer.

 

[Sprint]

Purely for gaming I would say go for it, not sure of the latest but Asus cards have a good rep but driver support can be a pain.

 

[Doom5003]

What card would you suggest?

 

[Bakerman]

For about R1000 the best you can get is a Xonar D1 or DX. Both cards are essentially the same, the only difference being that the one is PCI-E and the other PCI. They use the old AV100 chip, which IMHO sounds better than the new AV200 chips which produces a sounds that's almost too sharp. Don't worry about drivers, you can install hassle free unified 3rd party drivers and never look back.

 

[Doom5003]

Would I hear any difference in my audio and mic sound?
I was actually looking into the pci-e variant of those cards before posting.

 

[Sprint]

you will hear a difference

 

[Doom5003]

Thanks, so my next buy is the and Asus Xonar sound card.
Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Doom5003]

BTW i see some sites show the Asus Xonar DX Ultra Fidelity and other just Asus Xonar DX. Is there a dif between the two cards or is it just a marketing thing and they are the same card?

 

[Bakerman]

Same card.