Audigy 2 or upcoming X-fi is the way to go.Chaintech and other non gaming cards will sound as good or a little better than audigy in a VERY few games,those that use Miles 2d sound or something,majority of the games work off EAX/directX 3d sound etc,and non gaming cards sound like utter crap with that..they also cant do "headphone mode" binaural processing that is supported by most games that support EAX,and that mode gives you pretty good surround sound through headphones instead of plain stereo.The X-fi,according to claims, will have all the gaming processing improved and also a very good general sound quality..but it seems to be expansive as hell.Street prices will be lower though than retail ones but how much lower?

I have the HDA Digital X-Mystique. After that, bye bye, AUdigy 2.

There is a small CPU hit, but it is well worth it for the full digital 5.1 sound.

Half-Life 2 sounds fantastic.

-Ed