I appreciate all the input, guys. I built this PC over the winter, and am using the dinosaur-esque SB PCI 128. Its getting a little long in the tooth, and I thought I'd see what experiences I could dig up through the AH community. I'd heard some vague warnings about some of the Creative cards, but mine had been relatively trouble-free. Now I'm dealing with an I/O port assignment issue that won't allow me to enable my gameport (which means I can't hook up my dual throttle), and I'm getting some noise from AH2, hence the idea to upgrade.
I built this PC around the ASUS A7N8X-X mobo (2400 xp cpu), and, not having the documentation handy, I'm not sure what chipset it uses- I think its the nForce2, but I'd have to check.
Anyhow, thanks for the feedback; I always like to dig around and see what 'users' think of hardware, instead of what the sales rep says.
Cheers,