What can I say? Creative may not be popular among PC enthusiasts, but it's hard to deny the Audigy and Audigy2's prowess when it comes to hardware 3D audio acceleration, at least in the Counter-Strike: Source Beta. Then again, Creative doesn't have much competition when it comes to 3D audio. Hercules hasn't updated its sound card lineup for over a year and a half, and SoundStorm apparently won't reach beyond the aging nForce2 platform anytime soon.

M-Audio, Mad Dog Multimedia, and Philips' Envy24-based audio solutions are all relatively recent products. Unfortunately, they're all afflicted by the Envy24's lack of hardware audio acceleration, which at least in the Counter-Strike: Source Beta, can knock up to 10% off in-game frame rates. VT8237/VT1616 doesn't look so hot when it comes to in-game frame rates, either, but it's hard to expect anything better than software audio from an integrated motherboard solution.