I'm going to buy a budget-level sound card soon, and after reading as much as I could about it, I've narrowed it down to these two. Any more guidance you guys could give would be appreciated.

Chaintech AV-710
Pros:
Has the Envy24 HT-S chip, variations of which are pretty beloved by most on this forum.
Dirt cheap.
Small thing, but it has an Intel Front Audio Panel connector so I can connect headphones to the front of my computer.

Cons:
According to the only review of it I could find, it's low on features and documentation, and the setup screens leave a bit to be desired; it's pretty no-frills.
No hardware game support at all, not even EAX1 or 2.
I can't find any more detailed info about its performance, like RMAA tests.

Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III
Pros:
Often recommended by others.
Good game support, EAX 1 and 2.
Highly reviewed.
Separate headphone-out jack.

Cons:
Cirrus Logic chip, which may not be as high quality as the Envy24.
More expensive (though still affordable).

What I need:
I'm a somewhat avid gamer, but my processor and video card are pretty fast, so any performance hit I take from having a crappy sound card probably won't be perceivable. Right now I have crap-tastic SoundMAX onboard audio, and games play and sound just fine. Sound in games really isn't something I care about a lot; as long as it can play all the right sound effects on time, and it comes out of the left speaker if it's coming from the left and vice versa, I'm fine.

I also do a lot of music-listening through low-end Sennheiser phones, which will become medium-end Sennheisers at some point, so music quality is important, probably a bit more important than gaming performance.

I only have 2.1 speakers, though it's possible I'll upgrade to 4.1 or 5.1 in the future.

I don't do any recording at all.

So what say you, oh enlightented HydrogenAudio folk?

I bought a Chaintech AV-710 a few days ago since it was cheap and had to be better than my nForce2 audio and my SoundBlaster Live! 5.1, which it is. It is definately no-frills, and the back of the box actually has parts written in an amusing form of Engrish (it was obviously never intended for brick-and-morter retail shelves). The instruction manual is utterly useless. I have not tried any gaming at all on it and doubt I ever will since my onboard nForce audio will do that much better. The sound quality for music is very good, quite an improvement over both of my other computer sound sources.

The 5.1 channels seem to be driven by a VIA 1616 AC '97 codec, so those channels are always resampled to 48KHz. The rear stereo (labeled as Alt Out on the box) seem to be driven by a Wolfson WM8728 24-bit/192KHz DAC that is likely being fed the same resampled audio the rest of the channels are. However, the driver's control panel and the Windows volume control both have an option to switch on so-called "High Sampling Rate" mode which according to the VIA control panel says it allows 96KHz audio and it suppossed to switch off every channel except the rear stereo pair, although in reality the VIA control panel doesn't switch off any channels with this option and the Windows volume control just plays the audio through both the rear stereo and front stereo outputs. To activate this mode you have to switch on the SPDIF output, too. The VIA control panel only allows the high sample rate option in 2-channel mode. Unfortunately information about this card is nearly non-existant, so I have no idea what codecs really drive which channels and what some of the control panel options really do.

But for $27 it's definately a good card for music listening.

I would get the Chaintech just because I have had bad experience with the drivers for the Gamesurround Fortissimo II. Maybe the Fortissimo III is improved, but I wouldn't chance it again - just my opinion.

If you are planning to do gaming I'd highly recommend the hardware EAX support for a better experience. That would lead you to the Fortissimo. One problem here is that EAX 2 is getting old. Creative already has EAX 4.

I'd bought a Fortissimo to play an EAX 3 game (Americas Army) and was disappointed because of the CPU drain. Ended up returning it for a Creative Audigy 2 (which is EAX 3, also called EAX Advanced HD). I paid ~$80US for that card a year ago.

I would second the suggestion to get an Audigy 2... I just picked up a new ZS a few weeks ago and am very happy with it. The whole 48khz resampling thing is way overblown IMO for simple listening. If I was recording it would bother me though. 100% compatible EAX 3/4 support without much CPU utilization was my decision-maker.

I would suggest that someone with a 2.1 system has little or no use for EAX3, let alone EAX HD.

Since he will only be using 2 speaker setup, there seems little value in purchasing a good Creative card given the additional expense that entails. With a 4 or 5.1 setup then this would be more reasonable in my view.
Indeed, with 2.1 audio and a robust computer, there should be relatively little drain on CPU resources as a result of enabling stereo audio out even with a purely 'soft' solution like the Chaintech.
The Fortissimo III will of course have hardware DirectSound support and features some of the lowest CPU utilization numbers in the industry, assuming the API you choose is supported (which EAX3 & HD are not).


Is it possible to enable stereo out through the "Alt Out" in the drivers?

Can you specify your Nforce2 Southbridge? I'm personally impressed with the sound quality of the MCP-D southbridge of the nforce series of chipsets. I have it hooked optically to a surround system with great results. The realtime dolby digital encoding is supurb.