Thanks Trippy. After roughly 15 years of putting up with substandard hardware and having to play games at medium settings, I made it a point to save my pennies and build with high-end parts, and I haven't regretted it.
By the way, the Xonar sound card has worked with every game I've played, though sometimes options, such as EAX, are disabled in older software. Regardless the sound is, subjectively speaking, typically clearer and better defined than was the case with my old SB X-Fi gamer. Love cranking up blu-ray movies on it.
