A good surround sound card?

I was thinking of buying a sound card, one I was looking at is Sound blaster Xi-FI Xtreme Gamer. I have 5.1 speakers, but my room is too small and no where for the speakers to fit behind me...so it ended up not being surround sound, it was a present from my dad. So a sound card would be a lot easier since I have little room for speakers.

Is the Xi-Fi Xtreme Gamer good? I'm kind of on a budget (don't want to spend too much more than a 100 dollars, I'm out of work because of the economy and haven't been able to get a job. I'm doing my own thing, but I'm barely getting by)...so Xtreme Gamer is around 80 dollars.

Or are there any other good ones? The sound card seems to get good reviews. I have headphones already, so that is taken care of.

Whether or not a soundcard is worth it depends on how much you look for audio detail. If you get a soundcard you'll notice the sounds are a bit crisper and there is less background noise. It will also reduce the load on your CPU a bit.

If you are looking for a bit more audio detail, I would recommend the HT Omega Striker 7.1, it's about $70 IIRC. Good brand, high quality components, a simple yet powerful driver suite. A nice feature of these cards is Dolby Headphone, which will give you the sensation of having surround sound through headphones. All you do is set the driver to 8 channels, set the output to headphones and click the Dolby Headphone button, voila, play game and watch movies in a very well done psuedo-surround.

Really though, if you're just looking to have surround, and are satisfied with the way it sounds now, just save your money.

Whether or not a soundcard is worth it depends on how much you look for audio detail. If you get a soundcard you'll notice the sounds are a bit crisper and there is less background noise. It will also reduce the load on your CPU a bit.

If you are looking for a bit more audio detail, I would recommend the HT Omega Striker 7.1, it's about $70 IIRC. Good brand, high quality components, a simple yet powerful driver suite. A nice feature of these cards is Dolby Headphone, which will give you the sensation of having surround sound through headphones. All you do is set the driver to 8 channels, set the output to headphones and click the Dolby Headphone button, voila, play game and watch movies in a very well done psuedo-surround.

Really though, if you're just looking to have surround, and are satisfied with the way it sounds now, just save your money.

Marfoo

Thanks :)

And no, my surround sound system isn't that great...the speakers only fit in front of me, no space behind me. So it isn't surround sound at all really...I guess you could call it Faux surround sound.

I'll just save my money for now. And see if there is any way to get my speakers setup with the room I have...I have 5.1 and a good speaker system, just need to figure out the space.