I upgraded from an audigy 2 zs to a xonar DX, I think it's great. The sound quality is so much better I feel like I had earplugs on for the past few years. From reviews I've read, most people feel that it has much better sound quality than any flavor x-fi, even the 'extreme music' or whatever it's called. While its DACs are different than the D2X and D2 xonar models, most reviews said the difference in sound quality between the different xonars is negligible if it even exists. Something to note is it has front panel pinouts - I'm pretty sure the D2 and D2X don't have these. It requires a floppy-style power connector, and the power provided at the headphone outs is pretty solid, it's capable of driving low impedence phones better than most cards. Its drivers work great and the software is crisp and clean, not an endless bloated bog the way Creative's always are. It was a refreshing change.
On the downside, as a budget model, it has skimped in a few areas. Namely cabling - it comes only with a molex <-> floppy cable and an optical cable. Also, it only has five jacks; front, side, rear, center/sub and input. One input. Worse, this "input" doubles as the optical out - so no mic for ventrilo if you're outputting optical to a receiver.
As for games, to tell the truth I haven't been playing much since I got it, I've been listening to music mostly since it sounds so much better. I also don't have Vista, which as I understand it has some kind of positional sound standardization feature. So that's an area to read up about.
Facebook
Twitter