I have a  
Coolermaster Stacker 830 SE  
X-FI Xtreme Gamer Fatality sound card
XFX 780i Motherboard
 
i'm new to building and i cant seem to figure out the best way to connect my front panel sound to my sound card... I want to be able use the headphone and mic port on the front of the case.
 
The cases front panel has wires allowing for
- AC'97
- Azalia
- HD Audio
 
 
 
What has the best quality sound?  
 
How do I make all of the connections? does it connect to the card or the motherboard?

Honestly, I'd not buy the card and TRY the onboard sound first, if you think it sucks you can always upgrade. Most motherboards have headers (pins for the front mic and audio jacks...
 
PLUS if you are going to use vista, creative took all the high end stuff out of the X-FI drivers..no eax or anything, just plain audio !

That sucks that creavitve took all of that out of the drivers, because I am going to be using Vista Prem
 
i already have the sound card so definatly want to use it.  
 
So my question in the first post still stands, help anyone?
 
 

if i connect it to the case audio wires into the motherboard will it use the sound card, or the onboard sound?
 
i assume I have to disable the onboard sound in the bios settings, once i get my computer up and running, and allow the sound card to handle any sound I/O.

If you connect it to the motherboard, it will use the onboard audio period. If you want the audio from the card, the wires need to come from the card. The reason is there is not a way for the soundcard to shoot the audio over to the motherboard pins, those hooked directly to the southbridge which does the onboard audio only.
 
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/13472.cfm
 
look here about creative vista drivers and keep looking at stories on the net and you might rethink that x-fi.

I seem to have fully functional eax and crystallizer with my x-fi xtreme gamer.  This is on Vista 64bit.  Unless that's not the high-end stuff.
 
If it's not, what did they take out?

last I looked EAX and crystalizer were not supported, are you using modded drivers ?!

Nope, just the one that came on the disc with the card.