Need Sound Card suggestions

I need to get a new sound card. The piece of sheiss card that came with my mobo, Supreme FX II is absolutely worthless. I have been saving up by limiting my college beer fund and have come up with some prospects. Im staying away anything from creative, and i really dont know the the jargon behind all the sound card specs. What ive come up with is is the Asus Xonar DX, AuzunTech AZT Forte but id have to save up a bit longer, and the HT Omega Striker.
My question is, does it matter whether if the card is pci e or just plain pci? I kinda know what X-fi is and have a strong idea on EAX n what it does. I cant afford one of the top of the line cards, even though i wish i could. Its gonna be used with both a 5.1 logitech x-530 and/or Onkyo 5.1 receiver via optical, and a pair of Plantronics gamecomm 777 (i know they're sheissty but i got them for $15 and i cant complain about the sound quality for the price i paid). OS is Vista Home premium x64 and have plenty of spare pcie n pci slots available.Thank you ahead of time

after more research and sale searching, my possible choices are as follows:
Asus Xonar DX - good bang for the buck, no DTS though
Xonar DX2 - From what ive heard, provides some of the best sound a pc sound card can offer, pricey though
Azune xfi forte (would have to wait till its back in stock to get the very nice sale price at newegg) - EAX 5.0 will be nice for gaming sessions

Any help in my decision process will be greatly appreciated. My question is regarding the Asus cards, DX2 in particular, with the upcoming release of the Xonar STX, will the prices of the dx2 drop substantially enough for me to sit on buying it?

You don't need to double post. But I suggest if your interested pick up the Auzentech Xfi Forte. It is a solid card and you will not regret it.

Forte would be good I'd assume also, can't say from experience.

I've been using a Auzen Prelude X-Fi 7.1 for a over a year now at least and I really like that one here.

Probably about same price as the Xonar DX2, I really believe might be better than that one even. I love mine at any rate.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156005

Only problem I've ever had is had to go to a USB headset, to really get a mic on it to work right for Vent teamspeak etc. But the Pulsewave headphone/mic I've been using with it sounds great also

I think they might have fixed that with the Forte's, I can't say for sure though don't own one.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16829156010

Actually after reading a few sites, the Forte seems to perform very near to the Prelude apparently. Looks to be a nice smaller factor card, although I dont think the OP-AMPS are quite as good. Close though it appears.

InsaneManiac said:

You don't need to double post. But I suggest if your interested pick up the Auzentech Xfi Forte. It is a solid card and you will not regret it.

Click to expand...

second

Depending on your system specs, the X-fi Forte is a solid choice.

Over the Xonar cards, the Forte uses significantly less processing power, and has the added bonus of being upgradeable with opamps.

For the general masses, PCI vs PCI-E sound cards don't make too much of a difference, unless you're doing a lot of high-end stuff.

(Kinda like having an ancient AGP card in a computer vs a PCI-E video card not making much of a difference if all you do is surf the web).

There are a LOT of good reviews out there that compare the Forte, Xonar, and Creative cards.

--Stay away from the Razer card/headset. It's been garbage to me