Hooking up PC to Onkyo Receiver?

[affiatati7]

I would like to hook-up the video and audio from my Dell computer to my Onkyo Receiver TX-SR605 receiver and thus a 7.1 surround sound system hooked up to a Samsung LN-T5781F 57" LCD Flat Screen. The purpose is to play video games, saved on my PC, I have onto the LCD Flat Screen with possible surround sound.

Sound Card: Creative SB Live
Video Card: Radeon X1300/X1550 Series

Questions:

1- What is the best audio/video cable connection configuration to do the job. Attachment shows a picture of the back of my computer (sound card on top and video card on bottom)?

2- Do I have to change the sound card to transfer 7.1 surround sound to receiver?

3- Do the PC games have to be in surround sound? How do I know if they are?

The Onkyo receiver has the following inputs:

HDMI
component video in
S-Video in
Optical Digital in
Coaxial Digital in

[nova]

I take it that is a Live 5.1 that came with the Dell? If so, simply connect a 3.5mm mono to RCA adapter
to an analog coax cable (yanno, RCA connectors) and plug into the SB Live orange (S/PDIF) and the other end into your receivers Digital Coaxial input.

This card is not capable of 7.1, but your receiver should be able to matrix it. If you want true 7.1, yes you will need a new sound card.

PC games do not have to be in surround (though many are), thats what all the fancy sound processing features on a receiver are for I'm really not up on the 605, but most receivers will let you know if they are getting 5.1 with: a blue light (Sony), an icon per channel (Denon), etc. etc. From the looks of the Onkyo I'd bet it has an icon that lights up indicating DD5.1 or DTS or whatever format it's receiving.

[tonyvdb]

nova wrote:

I take it that is a Live 5.1 that came with the Dell? If so, simply connect a 3.5mm mono to RCA adapter
to an analog coax cable (yanno, RCA connectors) and plug into the SB Live orange (S/PDIF) and the other end into your receivers Digital Coaxial input.

Also make sure that digital output of the sound card is enabled in the audio settings control panel.

[Kuro]

Get three 3.5mm to RCA cables you have three outputs there. so you should be able to get 5.1 analog out. connect to the onkyo multichannel input, thats how I have mine. As far as video if you wanna play games but nothing to hard get yourself the 3850 (just over a bill) it has a dvi hdmi and ati also has hdmi audio (nothing more than 2 channel PCM/bitstream, but its nice to have all on one cable) If you want to get into serious gaming the new ati cards are almost out (everwhere says June) so wait for those.