IM considering a sound card and would like some input on what is the best sound card?

I do not have a frame rate problem. I have a number of mod aircraft, missions and scenery like every one else.

If I modify sounds in CFS_1  CFS_2 naturally my frame rates drop. Most of you have experienced this problem.

This depends on a lot of factors with in a mission sound, number of rounds going off etc etc. The one that slow down my computer is

Defence of Koror: There is a lot going on in this mission and I usually fly it 30 times in a week (One of my favorites to fly)

Operating System XP_Pro

Kingwin 436 Aluminum case

350W to 750W Varriable Power Supply/PC Power and Cooling
Total number of fans 14/PC Power and Cooling

Intel Pentim D850MV Mother Board
2 gig processor Stepping 4 on 2 sockets/ziff
Bus speed 400Mhz
Bios size 512 KB
Memory speed PC 800

1 Gig of RD Ram@35 nano seconds (4 sticks)

Hard Drives: 3/80 Gig Western Digial

Seconday ID Cable C:Hard Drive Master/CDR Slave

Primary ID Cable D: CDRW master/DVD slave

Promise ATA Controller card:
G:Hard Drive Master/H:Hard Drive Slave

Video Card Nvidia TI4400 128 meg

Sound Stock off the Mother Board, Sound is running digital.

Bose Speakers

WOULD A SOUND CARD MAKE THAT MUCH DIFFRENCE IN FRAME RATES?

WOULD A SOUND CARD HAVE THAT MUCH IMPROVEMENT IN SOUND?

Soundcards can make a difference in frame rates.

But, once CPU speed is up around 2.0 ghz, frame rate improvement is lessened because the faster CPU's can handle the sound processing without overload.

Also, with your GF4 ti4400 graphics card, the video processing is already at a very high level, which will make any small improvement in frame rates by a better soundcard seem less noticeable.

I haven't tried the Koror mission, but, like you say, a lot is going on. In CFS, I found the worst offender was addon effects for killing frame rates, followed closely by
complex aircraft models and then addon macros in dense scenery.