I'm currently wondering whether or not to buy a Sound Blaster® Audigy™ Surround 5.1

I could really do with an upgraded sound system, as im using my PC alot for listening to MP3s and watching DVDs at mo (and my PCI 128 doesn't cut the mustard anymore). Creative's UK online store offered the above card and speaker set for £127, which is as much as i would be willing to pay at the moment.

Could anyone suggest a place where i could buy the product for a cheaper price, or suggest a different combo.. of equivilant quality?

Secondly i need to know whether the above products would work with my current chipset/software setup:

VIA KT-133E Chipset (ABIT KT7E) BIOS 3R, Award 6.00PG

Win 2000 Professional.. Possibly XP Pro within the coming months

The card would also be sharing IRQ 7 with my USB controller..

They're excellent cards, but there are so many problems with them and the VIA chipset. Look at a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz card: http://www.tbeach.com/site/products/santacruz/producthome.asp
They seem to want to try to keep their drivers updated. Their sound quality is consistent with the Audigy and they are cheaper.

You also may want to look at the Hercules Fortissimo II. It's a nice little card, and is a tad cheaper, depending on where you look, than the Santa Cruz. IMO, it sounds better than the Audigy. While Via may be part of it, Creative doesn't deem it necessary to follow the PCI specs like other companies. They are getting pretty arrogant from what they are putting out.

Do you play games?

That's the only reason I can see to pop for an audigy, over one of the many, cheaper 5.1 sound cards.

The selling point of the Audigy is that it handles sound processing on the card itself, rather than dumping it onto the CPU.

This doesn't particularly matter for things like DVD playback, or MP3s.

It DOES matter if you're going to play video games with enhanced 3d audio.

If you don't play such games, then just stick with a Live! Value card or something like that.

What about the Sound Blaster® Extigy™?

With Creative cards having so many problems with the VIA based chipsets, surley a USB sound device would be a better solution?

I don't play that many games, its audio quality that im after with the minimum of fuss.

really depends on what your doing, if u play games and watch movies,go with the audigy or Santa Cruz,
if u do anything with audio(i.e. Multitracking,Midi) go with something like the M-Audio Audiophile 2496.The sound quality out of this card is excellent.

Hammer

"
What about the Sound Blaster® Extigy™?

With Creative cards having so many problems with the VIA based chipsets, surley a USB sound device would be a better solution?

I don't play that many games, its audio quality that im after with the minimum of fuss. "

With a Creative card (Audigy included), you can get around the notorious Via chipset incompatibilities by (a) installing the latest Via 4in1 drivers, and (b) ensuring that the sound card is not installed in PCI slot 1 (below the AGP port).

If that's too much hassle for you, then I defer to other members of this group regardin the best non-creative solution.

P.S. I *don't* recommend the Extigy unless you actually plan on using some of those extra ports & crap; it's a helluvva lot of money to spend on features you aren't going to use. And, besides, it's just USB 1; kind of a waste, IMHO.

I hear the Phillips Acoustic Edge is a good card.

Creative's Audigy drivers work fine, but only if you install things in the right order.

1. Install O/S
2. Install Audigy software/drivers from CD
3. Reboot
4. Apply official Audigy patch
5. Reboot

Sound card now works. If you try installing creative drivers on top of other updates such as DirectX 8.x and such, it'll crap out during install.

Audigy is a great card.

go for it

I have always had Creative's products. I have a Live now BUT I am very disappointed with their tech support or lack of.

To make a long story short: They have too many products and too little support! I had to wait almost 3 mopnths and 4 phone calls to get the updated drivers for 2k for their SB Live card!

Overall I also feel their software is bloated with alot of unnecessary additional software some of which you don't have a choice not to install and the drivers conflict with other programs/drivers (VIA especially).

To sum it up they are over rated.

They have always made great cards

Unless your one of the many unfortunate souls, including me, who have owned Via chipsets.

I do run Via chipsets but I don't feel that is the problem.
The chipset was out before the card!
Their software is too bloated!