GPU card blocking PCI Express slot

[Fao]

I just bought a new desktop, and I wanted to upgrade it with a dedicated sound card. The desktop is the XPS 7100, with the following expansion slots being used:

-WiFi adapter (PCIe)
-HD 5770 ATI Radeon (PCIe x16)

The problem is that the GPU card blocks the remaining PCIe slot, leaving just one PCI slot available.

I would remove the wifi adapter (in order to add the sound card) but the distance for the internet cable would be around 100ft (around 33 meters) and that's an installation I would rather avoid, so I wanted to know whether if the PCI sound cards are as good as the PCIe?

The sound card I would have used if the other PCIe would have been available, would've been the "Creative Labs SB0886 X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty"
However, since that's no longer an option, what PCI sound card do you guys recomend that might be as good as the titanium fatal1ty? Or maybe (if it's posible) I just change the wifi adapter to a PCI one?

Please help me!!!
Thanks a lot, Fao

[David (PassMark)]

For a modern motherboard I have never been able to notice the difference in sound quality between the built in motherboard sound and a separate card. The XPS 7100 already offers, what I imagine must already be fairly good, THX-certified integrated audio. Maybe I am tone deaf.

I would happily run 30m of Cat6 to avoid using Wireless for everything.

[College Smart]

You could always swap your wifi adapter for a USB model adapter. I use a linksys USB adapter and it works just as well as the PCI one I had a for a few years.

[wonderwrench]

There is nothing wrong with using a PCI sound card as the bandwidth used by sound cards is well within the limits of the PCI bus. Sound cards like low latency over high bandwidth so PCI could very well be better than PCI-E since PCI-E has high latency. You have several possible choices. Get rid of the wifi card and use cat5 or a USB wifi solution with a PCI-E sound card. Or get a PCI sound card or use the onboard sound.

Bill