I''d recommend anyone with a VIA chipset stay away from the sblive and the audigy. Creative doesn't conform fully to the PCI specifications which can end up causing corruption across the PCI bus. I suffered from this conflict on my old KT133 board with an sblive, which caused my system to crash under a high load quite reliably, making it a HORRIBLE card for gaming. Also, the sblive is known for its rather poor sound quality (mostly due to a very common problem with background hissing and even popping) especially for its high price (before the audigy). I have seen fewer reports of these problems with the audigy, though they are still there. I've actually read accounts of people who have "upgraded" from their audigy to AC97 (in other words, they switched to their onboard sound chip) because it actually sounded crisper and had less hissing. Not everyone will have problems with creative, so maybe it will work for you, but they do have a very clear trend of being problematic for a relatively high percentage of users. If you have one, and it doesn't give you problems, great! Keep it. If you're buying a new card, I'd suggest skipping the audigy and picking up a cheaper card with superior sound quality and features like the Game Theater XP from Hercules. If you want something cheaper, look into a Santa Cruz from Turtle Beach.