Soundcard Upgrade: What to get

Question

I'm upgrading my gaming pc (just put an Audigy 2 ZS in my Media Center PC) to the ATI Radeon X300 from the Radeon 9600se, and I figured a new soundcard might help speed up games as well. Someone told me that some relati'vely cheap soundcards have onboard processing of sounds to keep it off your CPU, thus reducing latency... What soundcards would do that? I don't want to spend a lot as my upgrading venture has already set me back a it. Right now the gaming PC is running a Creative AudioPCI ES37. I don't care much about multi-channels, as I only use headphones or my Creative MMS30 (2 watt) speakers. Yeah I'm old school... My budget is low, so if anyone has some upgrade options (speakers, too) I'd love to hear it!!! Thanks.
Gaming PC Stats:
AMD XP 3400 64-bit, running Windows XP Pro 32-bit
024MB PC3200
300GB SATA2
Radeon X300 256mb DDR2

Answer 1

Main question: is the difference between an 8-core 2.26ghz and the 8-core 2.93ghz really significant enough to justify the $2,600 price jump? Or is the 2.66ghz a satisfactory compromise?
Generally I would say no, but if you are looking at using the machine in a business you probably need to look up the performance differences on Barefeats.com and consider how you'll use the computer. I don't use my computer for business but when I render any big projects I usually do it overnight (sometimes encoding multiple videos that take 6-10 hours). In my situation cutting an hour or two off of the encoding time wouldn't justify the cost.
Second question: how stable are these models? I bought my G4 when it was the had-to-buy, newest-kid-on-the-block machine. It has been a love/hate, mostly hate relationship of crashes, freezes, loud fan noise and general bugginess. Don't want to drop a couple of grand on a new machine and go through the same situation. So is one of the 3 8-cores more stable than the other, or are they basically the same in terms of stability.
I've used Macs for 20 years and have had some issues over the years but have never encountered general bugginess. I leave my Mac Pro on 24/7 (putting it to sleep when I won't be using it for long periods) without issue. Occasionally (once every few weeks) I might start to see something getting a little quirky in the interface indicating an issue at which point I restart the machine and the problem goes away. I doubt you'll find anything comparing the various current models on stability. The best thing to do is to get the new machine up and running for several weeks/months before getting rid of the G4.
Third question: is there anything in my initial build of a computer that is a must have because it will be too big a hassle a year down the road to add-on.
Get the best graphics card available, Apple and third party providers aren't very responsive to providing upgrades to graphics cards.
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