New soundcard ? worth buying? wich one

Hello

I have the following system:

Athlon XP 1700+
Asus A7V266-E (via KT266) motherboard
512 MB DDR RAM
80GB MAXTOR 7200 RPM HD
Asus 8200 AGP (Geforce 3) video board
Onboard audio

I'm still unsatisfied with my system's performance in some newer games, like GTA3, Jedi Knight II and Grand Prix 4. I was expecting a system like this to run these games flawlessly, with no FPS loss at all even with all the features turned on. However, I'm still unable to turn on all the games features because the game will not run as I would expect.

I was talking to a friend of mine and he said that perhaps a good solution is to buy a good soundcard, because that would relieve some processing from my Athlon and I would have a FPS increase. He said that onboard audio uses too much CPU and a new 3D sound board would boost me like 10 FPS or so.

Is that true? Which sound card is worth buying for these newer games? Are Creative's sound boards worth a shot?

Thanks very much,

Fabio

i dont suggest using a via board period.. if you have one like i do i suggest using the onboard until you switch to a different motherboard.
via has problems with many pci devices not just the audigy.
for instance my hauppauge tv tuner locks when i try to access the 2nd ide channel (with one device on it)..

the problem lies in the lack of pci bus parking in the via chipsets.. something intel implemented a while back and so pci card makers have assumed is something they can count on. at least from intel..
as far as i know the nforce has this feature so it works fine with the audigy as well as the sis745.

i decided im waiting for the nforce 2 myself.
the kt400 supposedly will have this problem fixed also.

Athlon XP 1700+,KT266A,Geforce3, Audigy.. 'nuff said.

Well, thanks for the replies.

The Turtle Beach Santa Cruz is kinda hard to find here in São Paulo, Brazil. We are flooded with Creative hardware. Based on your replies, I have decided not to spend my precious money on a Creative Audigy Gamer card because it could be risky. I have an old SB 128 PCI in another computer so I guess I'll try to squeeze a few more FPS on the games using that SB. If it doesn't work, hell at least I didn't spend no money right?

Thanks for all the replies,

Fabio.