Soundblaster Live 5.1! or Voyetra Turtle Beach. Both great cards for little money and often recommended here.
I personally prefer the SB, but that's a taste decision, not quality based.
www.soundblaster.com
www.voyetra.com
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Soundblaster Live 5.1! or Voyetra Turtle Beach. Both great cards for little money and often recommended here.
I personally prefer the SB, but that's a taste decision, not quality based.
www.soundblaster.com
www.voyetra.com
I've been using the SB Live! Platinum 5.1 for a while now, and it's a fantastic card - it's worth saving your pennies for if you possibly can.
If you go to www.dabs.com and type "sound cards" into the Quicksearch box you'll find plenty in your price range. For me the only 2 brands I would consider are Creative or Terratec, they both get rave reviews in all the PC mags.
Personally,i prefer the Turtle Beach-Santa Cruz card. Have the SB Live! 5.1 in my second machine,but i don't care much for the bloatware and legacy stuff it tries to install. There are workarounds for this,but the Santa Cruz is so simple to install,compatible with everything i have and with my 3 speaker Altec Lansings,the sound is great!
My 2ยข worth...:)
If you're looking for a surround-sound card, go for the SoundBlaster 5.1.
Really all of the SoundBlaster cards are good. That's the company I always go for when I'm buying sound cards, they're excellent and work very well with Windows.
Good Luck.
Yeah, truth be told, I agree with Ridgerunr. I personally never install any of the extra "goodies" that come with the SoundBlaster cards, only the drivers. Most of it is pretty decent software, and for some people that's part of the reason they buy SoundBlaster cards, but for me it just takes up space and I never use it.
By the way, BlIsTeRpAcK, looks like it wasn't such a stupid question about fans after all. just goes to show the only dumb question is the one you don't ask.
Ok I will save my pennies and get the Soundblaster (it does have a headphone jack in the back, doesn't it?).
Looks like you are right Webshark2000, this wasnt such a bad question to ask;759 views-holy momma!
If you save up even more pennies and get the Platinum you get the breakout box that fits in a 5.25 bay and you get the headphone jack on the front with a volume control. I've got my headphones plugged into it right now, listening to Internet radio on Winamp3 :D (radiostorm.com classic rock - truly excellent).
Hmmm I could save more for the platinum however I would be really stretching it (I am a student!), to be honest its no problem not having a headphone jack on the front of the PC as I have headphones that have 3.0m cable length, so as long as it has a jack on the back of the card itself im fine!
Oh yeah, it's got a headphones jack. Acutally I shouldn't call it a headphones jack, since it's really a line out jack that you can hook up to headphones, speakers, or whatever. I've got the 5.1 card, but at the moment I'm not using it to its full potential. At the moment I've just got it hooked up two two Sony computer speakers (SRS-Z500s). They're great speakers, don't get me wrong, but I've got surround-sound and haven't set it up since I moved. I'm planning on it in the near future. That's when those newer video games really shine.
At the moment I've actually got a 1/8 inch splitter plugged into my line out on the back of my sound card (the green spot on the sound card). I've got it so I can have the signal going to my speakers, or if I want to turn them off and use my headphones I can do that as well since the signal is going there also.
The SoundBlaster 5.1 card also has it set up for those who don't need complete 5.1 digital surround sound (or don't want to shell out the cash for it), and you can use one jack for 2 front speakers and one for 2 back speakers, so it will still give you somewhat of a surround sound. Although, surround sound packages for computers have come down in price so much, it's almost cheaper to just shell out the money for the 6 speakers, than it is for just 2. I know SoundBlaster makes a 5.1 speaker setup (all-in-one package) that's less than $100.
The 5.25" front-panel that SuperSparks was talking about is excellent, if you do ever decide to go with it. I believe you can even purchase it seperately later on and it will work with your sound card (so you could save up for it after you get your sound card). But another plus, it has a remote control so you can control your computer's volume, what it plays, and more from afar. I plan on getting one some day (perhaps when they come down in price a little).
Anyway, hope that's some useful info for you.
Webshark2000, thats an abosultely great overview of the card. I thank you. :D