So my friend has given me his asus xonar phoebus to try out, quick question though, the Asus drivers on the CD aren't any good, Asus have released another driver to fix all the problems (8.0.1.22) for Win8. My question is do i install the CD driver and then install the newer driver over it or just install the newer driver direct from the website and leave the CD alone. But then don't i have to install the CD to use all the software such as Dolby Theatre 4 etc? Anyone got this card, is there an option on the CD to just install the software without installing the driver? Lastly for those with the card what are you opinions since the driver fix/update?
Just install the newer drivers from scratch..Don't use the CD at all. I had issues with my Phoebus and the driver CD. What you have there,is one of the best sound cards available today. Lots of settings etc. Play around and experiment with the various pre-sets etc. You'll be amazed.
Thanks for the quick response. What about the software, do i need to install this from the CD or when i download the driver from Asus does it install all the software with it i.e. Dolby Home Theatre v4 and the ROG software? The new driver is only 55,1 (MBytes), some i'm not sure if this has the Home Theater V4 software etc?
Another question i've got the Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD7 motherboard and i'm thinking which slot is best to install the sound card in. Currently the only card i'm using is my graphics card which is in the first slot - PCIEX16_1. Actually the first question is do sound cards benefit from being in PCIEX 16? I'm hoping not because my graphics card is also in one of my Express slots so if i add the sound card to my other Express 16 slot it will eat up the bandwidth of my graphics card right? Would it be a better idea to put it in my Express X8 slot? Wouldn't be able to fit it in my Express 8_1 slot as it would block the fans of my graphics card but i could put it in my Express 8_2 slot. Would that be the best option?
Your sound card can go in any PCIe slot with no downgrade in quality or bandwidth. The drivers include all the software for dolby etc.,as would be on the cd. Just download the new drivers and install as usual. Everything you need is there.
Check your mobo and make sure the audio card is not bottlenecking the bandwidth for PCI-E X16 bus. On some mobos if you put a lower spec card in a X16 slot in multi slot array it will lower the spec, ssay turn X16 slots to X8. Not on allbut something to keep in mind.
Yeah, but the impact on performance is minimal or null, unless you run with the latest powerhungry monsters in SLI.
Robscix means that if you have one gfx card and fit the sound card into a x16 slot, it might reduce the perfomance of the PCI-E slot that the gfx card is in. Even though the performance loss will be a few %, some people pay a lot of money to get a few %, and if you dont need to lose performance, it makes sense not to by observing sensible precautions.
@Mufflore, Exactly. It can pull your X16 bus down to X8 depending on the motherboard so it is a factor to be considered.
On my p5q pro my gpu blocks the available pci-e x1 slots, so my soundcard is in the lower x16 slot and now both slots are in x8 mode. I've made some tests and no performance loss whatsoever, but then i don't think my 6870 can saturate a pci-e bus.
Now that you have it installed etc.,how do you like it? Have you had time to play with some of the software? Let us know what you think. If you have problems with software,and the settings,we can probably help.