A couple of months ago, we took a look at ASUS' first true entrant into the burgeoning discrete sound card market, the Xonar D2. While we were impressed with the cabling and software bundle, the actual hardware proved itself to be a jack of all trades but master of none, with audio quality not quite on a par with Auzentech's latest offering, the Prelude, and gaming performance below Creative Labs' own X-Fi based solutions.

However, the last couple of months have seen a few changes and (hopefully) improvements upon the D2, which brings us to today's review. Out goes PCI support in favour of a PCI Express 1x interface, and the drivers for this board have also had an overhaul, particularly under Windows Vista, supposedly offering improved playback and recording quality. This new part comes under the name of 'D2X', and it's the subject of this article - Will it take ASUS from also-rans to a new leader in the discrete sound card market?