noguru

Are you sure you have the right driver? You need the high definition driver, not the AC'97. http://218.210.127.131/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

I'm not that surprised. I have a 15 year old Sony amplifier that sounds a lot better than the cheap rubbish you can buy now. It's all about the quality off the analogue components. And in the end, your speakers because these actually deliver the sound to your ears. But do I understand correctly, you are using direct sound as output with Win98? Everything will be down sampled to 22kHz...

I don't know for sure but my guess would be that unless the card has real electrical issues the only factor would be the chip. There's not much on a USB card more than the controller chip. Audio usually has an analog part which would need a more careful design. Sorry for this (very) late reply but it took a while to have a chance to get real proof. Yes, audio has analogue output. Maybe not the best example. But in the end when your talking about bare metal hardware it always comes down to real electrons going through real copper. That's why your motherboard is not running at the insane speed your CPU does. A signal or output can be digital but it's still made by analogue electronic parts. These parts can make a big difference. My brother has a €10 Sweex USB2-card with the Via chip. It worked for him with USB-keys and his wireless adapter. I have (well not anymore..) a ICDIU (or something) USB2 card with the same chip that I pay €15 for. Still cheap but a big price difference. So my brother bought a 1TB external drive and it didn't work. It was in explorer, he could open it and see files on it. But as soon as he tried opening those files the drive just locked. On other systems it was fine (thats how he got files on it). All other hardware in his system was also fine, no things like power or memory problems. So it must be the card thats causing the problem right? And it was. I swapped that card with my "superior" 15 euro card and his drive worked like there was never a problem at all. A simple look at both cards revealed the simple truth. The sweex card had usb ports and a Via chip on it. Not really more. The other also had a electrolytic capacitor paired with each usb port. Yes, those infamous capacitors known for the destabilizing (or much worse) effect that they can have on hardware when they fail. I didn't recognize the brand so it's probably cheap Chinese or Taiwanese and they might fail in the future. Giving my brother trouble again. But the Sweex didn't even have any to start with!

Haven't had any trouble with VIA. NUSB recognized it and it works fine. Never had to update with VIA drivers but that is perhaps because that system already had a VIA chipset+ USB1. Performance is fine with me, but processor usage can be quite high during file copy (40-60% on a Duron 1200). Don't know if NEC does better, USB is always processor intensive and a Duron 1200 is slow nowadays. I see the same under Ubuntu so it's not driver related. And I don't think is is the chip alone that is responsible for the performance, there are more electronics on such a little card that matter. VIA is used on by decent brands but also by dirt cheap no name (Chinese) producers. Just like the same VIA on-board sound chip actually sounds really different on different motherboards.