Creative vs ASUS is the "eternal" battle, it's a bit of a cold-war sort of arms race but they constantly seem to leapfrog each other for top spot.

In terms of raw specs, anyhow. Not necessarily in terms of actual audio performance. How they compare I just don't know, except that I'd expect that since they're both big brands they're competitive enough that they basically price themselves so you'll get exactly what you pay for.

I won't pretend to be an audiophile but I am someone somewhat "big" on audio. Just not big on audio cards. External DAC/AMP sound devices are the only smart way to go if audio quality is what matters. Fancier specs don't make any real difference in real playback unless maybe you're some sort of professional audio engineer/musician type. The electrically noisy guts of a PC are really an awful place to put audio hardware, no wonder it needs to overcompensate on selling spec. And even the prices are comparable, but at least an external audio device is a nifty self-contained gizmo you can easily "install" into any machine and any OS which has a USB port - it's even lighter on hardware/software resources, USB enumeration uses less bandwidth and memory and CPU cycles than PCIe lanes.