Need new sound card - moderately priced

I just upgraded my system and need a new sound card. My previous card in the old system was the Creative AWE64 (ISA). The only info I have is what I have seen at the stores and read on this site. I am aiming for something in the $50 range, give or take a few $$. One thing I DO NOT have is any kind of MP3 player or 5.1 capabilities. So, anything like Live!5.1 would be wasting my money since I can't use the multi-speaker support. Then again, will it make my current Altecs sound good? Thanks for the advice.

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Current set-up:
Abit KR7A-RAID
AMD Athlon 1133MHz (266)
256 MB PC2100
Gainward GeForce Ti500/XP Golden Sample
Sound - TBD
Altec Lansing ACS 45.2
44x CDROM
Creative Labs Modem Blaster 56K (v.92)

Santa Cruz or Muse

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Faster than freedom more nasty than hell.


Current system:
AMD Athlon 1.4ghz 266MHz
Swiftech MC462-A Hsf
Abit KG7 MoBo
1Gig Pc 2400 DDR cas 2.0 Ram 300MHZ
16x Dvd LiteOn
24x 10x 40x LiteOn
1 18gig Cheetah 15,000rpm
2 60gig 60 Gxp
Santa Cruz for now(Turtle Beach`s Dominater later)
Morpheus Geforce 3 (Geforce 3 Ultra later)
3com nic
431 Watt Enermax power supply

Quote:

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Originally posted by ellert:
I just upgraded my system and need a new sound card. My previous card in the old system was the Creative AWE64 (ISA). The only info I have is what I have seen at the stores and read on this site. I am aiming for something in the $50 range, give or take a few $$. One thing I DO NOT have is any kind of MP3 player or 5.1 capabilities. So, anything like Live!5.1 would be wasting my money since I can't use the multi-speaker support. Then again, will it make my current Altecs sound good? Thanks for the advice.

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I've had a AWE64 too! But i liked it very much! But i couldn't find a Mainboard with ISA slots. ): So i have a Audigy now! Damn that card rulezz. The sound quality is very good.
If i'm you, buy it! (:






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////// PegaSus \\\\\\

My only problem (right now) is that I'm running Windows 98. I guess I failed to include that in my specs. In reading up on the Audigy, it requires at least Win98SE to take FULL advantage of the 1394 system. Supposedly, Win98 doesn't support that. So now I'm thinking, do I spend $25 to go to Win98SE or spend $100 to upgrade to WinXP?

Otherwise, I've narrowed it down to Hercules Fortissimo II, Turtle Beach Santa Clara, or SB Audigy (plain version, no mp3, no xgamer).

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Current set-up:
Abit KR7A-RAID
AMD Athlon 1133MHz (266)
256 MB PC2100
Gainward GeForce Ti500/XP Golden Sample
Sound - TBD
Altec Lansing ACS 45.2
44x CDROM
Creative Labs Modem Blaster 56K (v.92)

[This message has been edited by ellert (edited January 22, 2002).]