For your PC (I gather you want to play enough games), I recommend a Hercules Fortissimo3 or an Audigy. They're quite enough for gaming, have relatively good sound for the price, [by now] solid drivers, etc. You can pay a bit more and get an Audigy2.
For the HTPC, START from decent sound cards around $100 (Creative Audigy2, M-Audio Revolution 7.1, Terratec Aureon 5.1 Sky). Just remember that (till something happens in new drivers which IMHO is unlikely, this seems to be a design choice/hardware problem) the Revolution cannot be matched well with TV tuner cards (e.g. ATI AIW series) if you want to do PVR stuff. Putting aside the fact that it doesn't have any input jack other than an analog one at the back of the card, I have read in many forums that this card cannot work well with PVR hardware (like the All-in-Wonder or other TV tuner cards) because it cannot do real-time monitoring on its [only] line-in jack (line in jack apparently has no pass through to output meaning it can't be monitored in real time. From what I've heard, you can open the control panel and check the "enable monitoring" box, but that introduces significant delay i.e. your audio will be out of sync). This (apparently hardware) problem has frustrated quite a few HTPC owners that bought the Revo for its nice analog sound quality and thought it was just like every other card in input monitoring (e.g. at the same price point the vanilla Audigy2 doesn't suffer from the same problem and it has multiple analog and digital connectors onboard, those used for CD inputs for example). If however, PVR isn't your cup of tea, it has the best analog output quality of the bunch.
BTW, if you're connecting the HTPC via digital cables to the receiver, you don't have to worry too much about the sound card. Just make sure it has a digital output port. You can start from $20 in this case and might also want to look at nForce2 SoundStorm mainboards.
For the HTPC, START from decent sound cards around $100 (Creative Audigy2, M-Audio Revolution 7.1, Terratec Aureon 5.1 Sky). Just remember that (till something happens in new drivers which IMHO is unlikely, this seems to be a design choice/hardware problem) the Revolution cannot be matched well with TV tuner cards (e.g. ATI AIW series) if you want to do PVR stuff. Putting aside the fact that it doesn't have any input jack other than an analog one at the back of the card, I have read in many forums that this card cannot work well with PVR hardware (like the All-in-Wonder or other TV tuner cards) because it cannot do real-time monitoring on its [only] line-in jack (line in jack apparently has no pass through to output meaning it can't be monitored in real time. From what I've heard, you can open the control panel and check the "enable monitoring" box, but that introduces significant delay i.e. your audio will be out of sync). This (apparently hardware) problem has frustrated quite a few HTPC owners that bought the Revo for its nice analog sound quality and thought it was just like every other card in input monitoring (e.g. at the same price point the vanilla Audigy2 doesn't suffer from the same problem and it has multiple analog and digital connectors onboard, those used for CD inputs for example). If however, PVR isn't your cup of tea, it has the best analog output quality of the bunch.
BTW, if you're connecting the HTPC via digital cables to the receiver, you don't have to worry too much about the sound card. Just make sure it has a digital output port. You can start from $20 in this case and might also want to look at nForce2 SoundStorm mainboards.
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