new sound card recomendations

Since my old Audigy2 Value seems to be crapping out (http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=868384#post868384) I am in the market for a new sound card.. (yay!)

I originally built this computer as a gaming PC, but over the past three years its components have become a little dated. Lets just face it, a 2.8ghz P4 paired with a Radeon 9800pro lags behind on most of the new games these days. Plus the fact that I recently got married means I don't have much time (or money) for gaming anymore. So for about the past year my gaming PC has been retired to playing movies, music, and internet use almost exclusively. That being so, my PC has now become my entertainment center. With s-video output hooked to my TV and Creative Gigaworks 7.1 surround speakers I no longer have any need for DVD players, or home stereo systems. This also means that sound is a very important element to my computer, and I look at every malfunction as an opportunity to upgrade.



After doing a little research to bring myself up to date, I'm only really interested in three different models, all of which happen to be Creative products. I'm struggling to choose between the Audigy2 ZS, Audigy4 SE, or the new X-Fi XtremeMusic.


I like the idea of stepping up to the X-Fi series, but at this point I’m still not sure if the price jump is really justified. From what I’ve gathered, the increase in overall sound quality I would get from springing for a X-Fi series card would be quite negligible. And since my PC isn’t going to shine on any of the newer games anyways, do I really need the gaming performance increase I would get from buying a X-Fi card? After all, the Audigy2 ZS still supports EAX and everything. (Plus my wife probably won’t be too hot on the idea of my spending $80 on a sound card that she has little to no interest in.)

If the X-Fi ends up out of my price range, then it comes down to either the Audigy2 ZS, or the Audigy4 SE. At $60 and $55 respectively the Audigy4 SE sounds like the best deal, although I don’t really know much about the differences between these two cards.




Any opinions?

 

My brothers purchase a Audigy2 ZS a few agos and he is realy happy with this sound cards to date never had a problem with games and music he does some sound editing with and this thing run pretty great so for this is a good card.....

Hope this help...