Sound Card thoughts?

[Reschke]

I know that this has been covered before but I need a few quick recommendations. The wife ack has agreed to an upgrade and I am past being tired of on board sound.

Here are the two cards that I am looking at getting. If anyone has any recommendations I would be glad to hear about them.

Creative Labs http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829102005

Auzentech http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156005

BTW here is my current system specs:
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
WD 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-AR LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775
EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16
MS Vista Home Premium SP1

[BaldEagl]

I can't tell you anything about the other card but I just bought the same Creative card you're looking at.  It's worked great for me.  It's got it's own processor, RAM and some nice tweaking features although I find myself tinkering with the speaker system's volume and sub-woofer settings between music and gameing, and even between planes and GV's in AHII.  Not a big issue and I'm not sure if it actually stems from the card or the speakers.  Either way, two minor tweaks and all is well. 

I've read about problems with the drivers but I haven't had any (XP Pro) and I updated to the latest ones.  My system is similar to yours (EVGA 780i mobo, EVGA 512 8800 GTS, Intel 6750 2.66 Conroe, 2 Gig Kingston RAM, 250 Gig Seagate 7200 RPM drive...) so it should work out for you (although I think Vista is where most of the driver issues are coming up).

Also, don't forget to disable on-board sound before you install either of those.

[alskahawk]

 I don't use anything except Creative labs anymore. I used to have a Turtle beach which was very nice but some games didn't like it. Creative labs has lower end as well as higher end cards and works with all the games so I stick with them.
 For AH I use headphones so I just use a old cheap Creative labs sound blaster. For my other system that has a nice speaker system I have a nice XFI gamer card.

[Reschke]

I have read a little about the Auzentech card. It is built on the same chip as the Creative One and uses a similar driver setup but they were supposed to have tweaked it for better sound quality than the Creative. At least that is what I read in Maximum PC the other day. I am going to do a little more digging on both of them but I do appreciate the feedback and information on the Creative card.

[Fulmar]

I have that exact card.  I upgraded to it a few months ago.  No hiccups other than the install**.  I upgraded from an original Audigy and was afraid I wouldn't hear a difference in quality, but I did.  Made my Sennheiser headphones even better.  The X-RAM stuff is mainly a gimick, I can't imagine getting more than an extra 1 FPS with it.  Creative's drivers have always sucked.  I haven't had any problems with this X-FI in XP Pro 32bit.  I know my original Audigy card would have problems during initial driver installs.  Creative + Vista is still big problems though.

**I had a problem when I first put the card in.  I developed an IRQ conflict because I replaced the card in the same PCI slot as my old Audigy.  The card would show up in Device Manager but not in the Control Panel Sound Properties.  Something must not have uninstalled all the way and the card would not work in the same PCI slot as the original Audigy.  I merely swapped the card in a different slot and fixed the problem.