I absolutely love my Hercules Game Theater XP. Its their premium product, their lowest priced cards are generally better than Creative's.
If you wanna go with Creative (yuk) get the lowest priced Audigy you can find. They are all the same except that the Platinum has an I/O interface.
As for the I/O: Ive had both and let me tell you the Game Theater XP is the superior product.
