Hi folks,

I currently am running a Pentium IV 1.93 gHZ machine, overclocked to 2.5 gHZ. I have 512 mb of PC800 RDRAM, a Geforce3 64mb card (VisionTek) and an old Soundblaster Live XGamer sound card.

Upgrading to the video card I WANT is out for the present time, until after the weeding and honeymoon are taken care of. But what I am wondering is this:

Would I see a performance increase from upgrading to one of the newer sound cards, like an Audigy2 or a new Hercules card? I just have a feeling this old Live! card might be dragging my system down. Would a new card use fewer system resources?

My motherboard also has an AC97 chipset on it, which I have disabled. I thought the SB Live! probably used less CPU time. And the other option I have would be to use the USB connection on the Digital Sound System ... but I think that's the most CPU-intensive option of all.

I don't have anything special in the way of speakers right now ... just an old Microsoft Digital Sound System. They were made by Phillips, pump 80 watts and still sound really good. I don't have any place to put surround satellites anyway.

So, what would y'all recommend?

Thanks,