Recommendations for Sound Card Needed

[Continuity28]

First, the problem: My current audio is the onboard Realtek ALC850, and this has given me problems ever since I've had this motherboard months ago. Games tend to crash, and the problem goes away after disabling sound... It's also using up a bit more CPU than I'd like.. I've tried various driver revisions over time, right now I'm using the Realtek WDM A3.84 driver...

Anyways, here's what I'm looking for (in this order):

1. Stability both in card and drivers especailly. I'd really like to not experience crashing in response to audio driver issues, as that seems to be the culprit lately.

2. Low CPU utilization. The more the card can do on its own without taking away CPU cycles, the better.

3. I primarily game, but do listen to music as well... I don't need digital outputs or inputs, I don't need 8 channel audio, but will accept them of course. I'm not quite sure if EAX and such is worth it, any opinions on that?

Any input, recommendations, or inquiry would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jpotter]

If you're into gaming and light music listening, you really can't go wrong with either an Audigy2ZS or a low-model X-Fi (Xtrememusic)- I have the latter and it gives me an incredible sound quality improvement over onboard sound, EAX in games can be really fun stuff indeed. It really depends on how much you're willing to spend- the X-Fi is especially good if you use headphones, but the Audigy will still give you good sound and they're going really cheap now. Finally, I've had no problems with driver stability, though I heard the early X-Fi's had some issues with NF4 motherboards, IIRC that's been mostly resolved by now. Good luck with your upgrade!