Sound Card connections advice?

[Trems]

All,

After finishing the PC build, OC'ing, tweaking, RAID'ing and getting cooling sorted i'm now looking at ways to further squeeze some performance out of my rig.

One resource that i am currently utilising is the 7.1 onboard sound to power my Philips 5.1 system (PC specific). The system uses 3 mini jacks (orange, black, green) into the MOBO outputs and a Realtek HD audio driver.

I'd like to take this processing task away from the board onto an internal soundcard, i've been looking into various X-Fi based cards but there seems to be a difference in connectivity at the back of the card.

Could someone explain what these differnces are and which would work with my 5.1 surround for gaming and Mp3 listenage?

The X-F1 gamer is an example that caught my eye and has the three jacks (different colours).

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=SC-051-CL&groupid=701&catid=11&subcat=

Many Thanks in advance

 

[Leporello]

Do your motherboard sound connections include an spdif minijack connector? Many do. If yes the simplest way to connect your PC to your amp is to use a minijack to phono adapter and an RCA cable or a minijack to RCA cable.

If you need the cable with the orange, green and black connectors they are available from Creative. I have one of these unused which I'll let you have for a five pound donation to Amnesty International. PM me if you're interested.