Best gaming soundcard for windows 7

With the new year on me and my 15 year old soundcard sputtering to its death, what card would be best for a windows 7 gaming machine, mainly playing counter-strike source?

I'll try to put this as simply as I can. As long as the sound card is by Creative Labs, and the sound card fits in a slot you have available on your motherboard, then it barely matters what you get. I get excellent sound from my card. My card is a PCI Creative Soundblaster Audigy SE that I got a year or two ago for $30. Driver support for it with Windows 7 gave me a little bit of trouble, but I got it to work anyway. It's an old card...what can I say? Driver issues are to be expected in such a case.

Regardless though, the general rule of thumb still stands. Just let me know how much you're willing to spend and what slot you have and I can link you to an appropriate card if you like. Cards go for anything between $30 and $300 bucks. There are PCI-Express versions and PCI versions as I'm sure you're aware.

If there's anything that needs further explanation, please ask. I'll be happy to answer.

If you mean best of the best, there are several hundred dollar soundcards for audiophiles, but as it sounds like your situation is mainly for gaming, I would recommend the Creative X-fi Xtreme Gamer - it uses a PCI-E x1 slot, sounds great when playing games and drivers work with Windows 7.

This could be worth a look-just been released...
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/01/prweb3420054.htm

PCIe x1 , EAX 5.0, 122dB (DAC), 118dB (ADC) etc, etc....

thanks for the responses, my main concern is surround sound in my headphones, as in I want to hear exactly where that footstep was.