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From my understanding, the X-Fi has two benefits: (1) improved audio (e.g. better positional sound); and (2) offloading of audio-related computation from the CPU to the soundcard for improved gaming performance. See this link on CPU performance with different sound cards. Note that those tests were with the X-Fi Xtreme Music; I suspect that the Elite Pro model would have much better performance.

X-fi is most likely better in every regard then A7V10, including analog out. I know it best the Revolution 7.1 by a fair margin, which is a pretty popular card. And even if the game does not use EAX, it still most likely uses DirectSound3D, and Creative cards accelerate it much much better then anything else. Somtimes the differnce is more then 10% depending on how many buffers. In fact X-FI can do 127 voices with about 8% lower CPU usage then 64 voices from envy24 solutions. The envy's can't even do 127 period. I suggest just reading some reviews, people around here are quick to bash creative. I can also say that the Resampling issues of the Audigy series are corrected, as my X-FI sounds -signifgiantly- better with it's native sampling then Foobar's resampler. It's really a downgrade enabling that resampler in foobar. All this said, now that I own a cheap(200$), non-os dac, there's no way i'd ever consider going back to soundcard dacs. My dialogue II just destroys the x-fi's output.

edit: the elite pro's gaming performance should be on par with the lower x-fi's. It still uses the same DSP. The only differnce is X-RAM and better dacs/op-amps. X-RAM can improve performance on games that have special programing for it, but it won't do anything for current games, and future support for the feature looks a bit shady.

I wonder how good of a DAC that elite pro has, the last time I heard it was supposed to be comparable to that of Micro DAC due to CS4398 part being used in both. So in light of the question would elite pro ($365) be a better value than getting an external DAC ($299 + $100 for an X-Fi + $ for optical cable), if portability isn't an issue?

I agree X-Fi is a decent card line up, and most excellent for gaming. Right now only Battlefield 2 and Doom 3 with patch really showcase the goods. It will not help you that much in games without emphasis of positional audio as in Civilization IV, except for maybe overall sound improvement. I don't know, I want to purchase the elite pro to find out; I have an onboard sound.

The external dac's still sound better. Better op-amps, power supplies etc. Plus, they can be sold for a better resale value, used with other inputs, and when you upgrade your sound card you still have them. Plus there's no non-os sound cards if you like that sound (I Love it!). The performance gains in X-Fi/Audigy for gaming are pretty good across the board, even Directsound 2D is signifigantly faster on Audigy/X-fi. Just about all games use DirectSound of some sort, 2D, 3D, etc. Many games also use EAX, Eax Advanced HD 4.0, and soon EAX 5.0. So just because your game does not use 3d audio dosent mean X-Fi won't take some of the load of the processor. Though anything worth playing these days has at least basic DirectSound3D support.

Edit: Also i'd like to note, the elite pro would need to be massively better then the Extreme Music to just match my Dialogue II, it's really a huge step up from x-fi sound. Im sure the 135$ DAC-AH is just as good too. Things to consider..

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Heh, that probably doesnt pertain me, most games I am playing (or going to install) are 2D, so they make ample use of Directsound, but not D3D. Nonetheless, thanks for the input on the performance issue. Personally, I am not into power hungry 3D FPS, but I get asked for recommendations on computer hardware quite often so its good to learn more about the lastest trends in the soundcards realm. Good to hear you like the Dialogue II, I was considering it for a shortwhile until I succeeded at fixing my 1212M

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Are any of the external DAC in a price bracket lower than the MicroDAC going to perform less well than the Elite Pro?

DAC-AH, and Dialogue II should outperform elite pro by a fair margin. IMHO. They are around 175$ and 240$ shipped. Microdac is 270$ /w contributer discount. I prefer non-os sound myself so microdac was out.

These non oversampling DACs will have less resolution being old and 16bit and all but they will gain on the pleasantness of the sound compared to an internal soundcard.

You can still gain benefits from better soundcard with better digital out to a DAC since SPDIF is always a weakpoint but on a budget this is hard to do. I wouldn't worry about it.