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Hi all! Here's the situation: My onboard died. i was using my mobo's built-in ALC655 codec with a set of 5.1 speakers. Recently, after moving around my pc room, it appears the jacks for the front and center speakers went kaput, and no sound comes from them any longer. So i was going to replace them iwith a discrete pci sound card. However, since this pc is at its end of life with me, (planning to build a new one in at most a month's time) I don't want to invest too much money in it, but since i'll donate it to my dad, i have to fix the sound at least. He doesn't use it for gaming, and AFAIK, not much music either, so a high-quality sound card is not a necessity. As for OS, this pc is pretty much sticking with XP (no Vista/7 support). I originally thoguht of buying some el-Cheapo CMI8738 PCI card off some local retailer, but the other day I came upon a dead-cheap Sound Blaster 5.1 VX. Now, apparently this is a somewhat new model, but I haven't for the life of me been able to find much on this card, other than the (mostly useless) info on Creative's website, and apparently that lots of linux users have it. So, has any of you heard about this card? Anyone has any experience with it? Or any other card in a similar price range you can reccommend (I'll be willing to invest about $20 tops)? Thanks for your help!

It looks like a bare-bones Audigy card. Maybe an OEM special, it seems to come bundled with a CD and no retail packaging. You'd be better off with this than an 8738-based card, at least this one uses a separate codec.

Given the price point and the intended use, I don't think it really matters. As long as you don't end up with some 10 year old POS that doesn't have decent XP drivers, you should be fine. Maybe someone you know even has one they're not using that they'd be willing to part with for cheap (or free).

Exactly. If you were buying this for a gaming system, spending $40 for a refurbished X-Fi XtremeGamer would make sense. For what you're looking for, almost anything will do.

Well don't feel bad. A freak storm in the middle of the night Sunday killed my Xonar D1. Thank goodness nothing else in my system fried but it hurt to lose my sound.

Fortunately I still had my old Audigy 2 ZS in the closet, so I at least have something until I buy another ASUS.

Thank you all for your answers! I decided to take the plunge and get a TB Santa Cruz from ebay. almost the same price ('bout +2 dlls), but I've only read good things from this card, and since vista compatiblitiy is not an issue, i gues i can let my dad have nice sound at least ^_^.

Having just retired a TBSC in anticipation of Win7, you and your dad will be exceedingly happy with the choice.

Yup, my TBSC was one of the best soundcards I've ever owned.