A few years back (late '386-to-early 486 era), I was curious about folks' fascination with soundcards, so I asked around the store (about 7-8 employees, customers, hangers-out, etc), "If you only had enough money to buy one of these items, soundcard, double your CPU speed, or double your memory, which would you go for?" I was certain that important stuff to enhance performance would be the priority, but every single one of them (all gamers, BTW) agreed that the soundcard would be their first choice. Sheesh, I didn't get it, so I continued my (unscientific) survey for a few days, asking everyone who came in the same question. The response was 100%! Not a single person agreed with me, that performance was more important than their st00pit games making weird noises at 'em. I still don't get it...
--T