Just thinking about what I had wrote and
remembered the semantics
used here...
One more hint: card X is a very high end one. It
should
be 'perfect', or at least much better than card A.
... which might suggest that Card X is not performing well. Since it
has been stated the card x is not USB, it is possible that this card
has it's audio clock derived from the PC clock which is likely
dithered - they call it spread spectrum to help reduce radiated noise
in testing.