Yes, Surround sound on a PC when it comes to games is different. When it comes to "movies" the surround sound is pre-programmed and coded (Dolby for instance) and sent to the receiver via the digital connection and usually the receiver will decode it and render it to the speakers. In PCs, the video game has to actually have a separate connection for each speaker because the game doesn't encode anything and actually renders the sound real time and passes it real time to the appropriate speaker. Now if you have a media center (like I do) I still use the optical out and when I am watching movies it passes the encoded sound and my receiver decodes it. I know some sound cards can encode and decode surround and take the game sound, encode it, pass it via digital to speakers that then decode it but most PCs have the multi mini-connector deal going on. I hope that makes sense. Sometimes people will hook up their PCs to a receiver via TOSHLINK and not be able to get surround from their games, reason is that on most PCs, the TOSHLINK only passes the encoded bits and the receiver decodes, games do not encode sound so it doesn't work properly. That is where Soundblaster comes in and other highend sound cards. Consoles do everything onboard then passes the content as if it was a Blu-ray or DVD so they do not compare to a PC.
