dude... don't read the reviews of that card goto the ASUS forum on that card and read all the pissed off posts. That's what made my decision... asus doesn't quickly release any fixes for anything ever imo. All the reviews I read on the asus card were perfect the GX (openAL) failed for me in multiple games.

The people on their forums were chomping at the bit for a new driver fix and reviews don't mean a thing if thousands of actual users are complaining about the same hardware.

As for the pci-e sound card I would totally do that... especially with all the layouts i've seen coming down the pipe.