Maid, I think I can guarantee that if you get an nVidia GTS450 or GT440 (at the least) video card, you and your husband will be happy. The card's HDMI can pass on decoded LPCM as well as bitstreamed HD audio to an HDMI receiver. There is no need to spend money on a sound card. You can let your new receiver do the digital to analogue conversion and even decode the HD audio too if you want. Also, using an nVidia card, as you do now, Red October HQ will run very well, using the video card's hardware as much as possible.
The only caveat to all this is that there will be some spending to do to get the receiver and the video card. You may not, like I said in my first post, notice a night and day difference in the sound quality between regular DTS and lossless DTS-HD MA. It'll also mean that your rips/downloads will be many gigabytes bigger. I do notice a difference, and I much prefer the HD audio, but if I had to I could still live with regular DTS or AC3