The point of buying a new sound card is lost on most of us. Almost all PCs now come with onboard sound capabilities, often in 5.1 surround sound, so why should anyone pay more for another sound card?

Our answer to that question is Creative's X-Fi range of PCI cards, based on the company's new X-Fi sound processor, which offers better sound reproduction all round.

While most sound cards are aimed at gamers, the X-Fi has three modes - gaming, entertainment and audio creation - each of which optimises certain aspects. In gaming mode, more 'voices' are available, so in-game sounds are more detailed and more realistic.

In entertainment mode (as in the other modes, in fact), the card attempts to repair damaged or badly encoded sound files and improve their quality, and CMSS-3D technology remixes the sound for the PC's speaker set-up (so a stereo track sounds good on surround sound speakers and a 5.1 DVD soundtrack sounds good on headphones).

Finally, audio creation mode has numerous tweaks and features for those creating music on the PC.

It is fair to say that the card and CMSS-3D make a big difference, and generally sound is noticeably better on the X-Fi even compared with Creative's previous best card, the Audigy 4.

There are other cards available in the X-Fi range, which come with more options for plugging in devices or instruments, or more memory for samples, but the Xtreme Music is a good place to start for most users.