SB Live! 24-bit awful in game

I picked up a SB Live! 24-bit to use over my onboard audio on my newly built rig and its dreadful in games (specifically World of Warcraft). Music and everything in Windows XP sounds just fine, but Warcraft sounds are muffled to a noticable degree and I've tried everything. It seems any drivers I throw at it, other than the ones that came with the disk, spit back at me saying no SB Live! card can be detected. I tried different PCI slots, messing with the equilizer, etc etc. So I gave up and put an old Chaintech 7.1 card in with the envy24 chip in. This card is even worse in games (some sounds don't play).

So my concern has anyone had issues with the SB Live! 24-bit in gaming? If I could get rid of the darn muffled underwater feeling I get in games I'd be in the clear. I was looking at the Santa Cruse Turtle Beach cards as a last resort, but they use the same Envy24 chip that doesn't impress me because I can never get my rear speakers to work with my current Envy24 card. I'll probably end up dishing out the big bucks for an Audigy2 Gamer if I can't resolve this soon...which upsets me.

Rig:
Epox 9NPA+Ultra mobo
AMD 64 3000+
1gig Corsair DDR400
Chaintech AV710 7.1 sound
Chaintech Geforce6600GT 128GDDR3

How does the Augidy2 Gamer fair? Same chip and functions as the ZS?