ok. here is the thing. any top of the line sound card is for recording. not for playn back 7.1 or entertainment purpose. so if u want just surround sound, get anything that does it. its basically a card capable of 8 channel playback (7.1=8channels of audio) + if u want good sound for games, get something that supports AEX 5.0 (x-fi series is the only card right now supports it). but anyway, ull see 0.5 to 1 FPS gain from sound card if u r lucky. its not big at all u know. since all the graphix r now processed by GPU mostly. not the CPU.rx7i2 said:what if im upgrading with a top-of-the-line 7.1 sound card?
Does it depend on the CPU on how much stress it puts into it?
well. i have x-fi and i like it for games. but ya the part it "makes the sound better than original/cd quality" or w/e they are saying is lie. sound can be as close as the original. but it never gets better than the original. btw, my 24-bit crystalizer is off. i personaly dont want my sound to be "crystalized". it hurts. but hey its only $100. great for games. if i had money, i would get apogee or mytek d/a and mcintosh amp w/nice set of proac speakers. but..at least i still got my ns-10...Crysalis said:If you dare think about getting the X-FI....
Read from the second page about half way down to the third page.
http://techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96322&perpage=15&pagenumber=2
X-FI has nothing but a compression and EQ circuit that makes you THINK it sounds better, but it doesn't.... by far. It actually just adds distortion which in turn, is bad for your speakers if you have a good system.
This is my source:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/multimedia/creative-x-fi-part2.html