i already saw a review of this card at another site, and i have to say for under 100 this has to be the best card to buy feature wise. creative has a monopoly on sound cards and now finally another company is giving creative a run for their money.

After seeing so many good reviews of this card I'm going to get it for the rig I'm slowly but surely putting together. I like that it has a standard hookup for front panel audio outputs unlike Soundblaster where you have to spend more to get that 5 1/2 add on that has 10 jacks that you most likely will never use and takes up a 5 1/2 slot.

Perhaps there will be another race to the bottom (or race to the top, if you look at technology) for soundcards just as there is in videocards and processors

It would interesting, too, to see how long it takes vendors to pick up on the ASUS cards in their desktop configurations.

A real valuable comparison would've been the xonar versus Creative's xi-fi or audigy sound cards. We all know onboard HD sound is halfway decent for casual dvd watching or gaming.