hi all, have had my soundcard for a couple of years now and was thinking of upgrading it. im i will be using it for mainly gaming im looking at the asus xonar dx but would this be a performance upgrade from my exsisting sound card which is the creactive xtreme audio?.
If all you're doing is gaming then I wouldn't worry about a dedicated sound card, unless you have a particularly high end sound system. Most of the processing for the sound is done by the CPU, and nowadays onboard sound quality is pretty good. Generally, it's only those who have high-end sound systems or those who do a lot of professional audio work that find the need for a dedicated sound card. If you're happy with the performance of your current sound card then I wouldn't worry about an upgrade. I wouldn't have thought you'd see a massive improvement unless, like I mentioned, you have a high end sound system. If you have money set aside that you'd like to spend on a computer upgrade though, why not post your system specs and we can recommend an upgrade based on your needs and your current system?
If you are talking about performance as in speed, then no. There is probably other areas that will give you way more performance for your money. (Like CPU, ram or saving it for a GPU later on)
The Asus will have better sound quality, if you have very good audio equipment to make the difference noticable The Xtreme audio also has great sound quality but not quite to the same standard as the Xonar. Either will be an improvement from on-board sound. If you want to play games though I'd aim for something like the Creative X-FI Xtreme Gamer, The Xtreme Audio is basically a cut down version of this with 3D hardware acceleration done on your CPU instead of the card itself. The Xonar also does this method. The Xtreme Gamer calculates all the positional sounds and effects on the card itself which improves performance in games. On the other hand if you have a powerful quad core CPU then you should probably get the Xonar and let one of your spare cores handle the 3D Audio.