Sound Card for Win 7 64bit

[madrat]

Hi,
Can anyon suggestst a "cheap sound cardrd that works properly with Windows 7 home premium 64bit.
I have tried 2 so far with poor to disastrousouse results.
First was my faithfull C-Meedia 8738 LX with the downloaded drivers from C-media. It worked but half the functions were not there and it made the system almost 90 seconds slower to start up.
Next came Sound Blaster Audigy 24bit. Windows installed it but it didnt work. Downloaded drivers from Creative and it worked then there was an update for it and the PC crashed. Tryed again without the update and all was fine for a few days (although most of the features were missing) then it started to sound like a CD was stuck when playing sounds and I had to reboot every time it did this, then once again it crashed the PC. These were both PCI cards.
I'm now using a 99p external sound dongle but it dosnt work with speekers only headphones.
I'm now hesitant to buy anything. The cheapest sound card I have seen that Microsoft recomend for windows 7 64bit is the Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI-Express - OEM at £35 but I'm reluctant espeshialy as its really a re branded Audigy and not a true X-Fi.
So can anyone help? Has anyone experianced the same problems?