advice on a sound card?

[Steyr]

Is it worth paying the extra 30 or so quid for the retail XtremeMusic over the OEM version?

[this_is_gav]

The creative cards are good enough (probably overkill) for any gamer and have the best support of any soundcard on the market.

So you've got 5.1 sound on Vista then? x64 and Vista support has been nothing short of atrocious. Only a few days ago did Creative release RC1 drivers, days after RC2 was released. Lord only knows if they work with RC2.

That said, there's little alternative to Creative when it comes to high-end soundcards with breakout boxes, and that's annoying.

[un1d3n]

woh guys! thanks for all the help

by the sound of it, and by personal expierience (i have an sb live 5.1 now) im going with creative x-fi xtrememusic, not the best but still fantastic from what you have all said...

Is it worth paying the extra 30 or so quid for the retail XtremeMusic over the OEM version?

i would like to know this aswell

[shaithis]

Haven't tried with Vista, but I have 5.1 with Windows XP and XP64.

The one caveat to get it working in everything was to install and configure a control panel app called AC3Filter. Took a little while to setup correctly but everything is working like a charm