If you're buying new hardware. A sound card is totally unnecessary. The CPU hit is negligible on modern hardware. Lots of motherboards support 5.1 surround.
Don't let the fan boys fool you. It's simply a waste of money.
Sound engineers have put countless hours into making the sounds in these games already sound awesome. The fancy soundcards are only applying filters and limiters to increase gain and reduce clicks and pops.
Stereo imaging, limiting, compression and all of these things can also be applied to your onboard sound.
Your speakers/headphones are much more important.
On the other hand if you plan on doing more that just playing games and listening to pre-recorded sounds, then a sound card is a must. A low latency ASIO 2.0 card will allow you to do amazing things in the sonic realm.
Onboard sound is not an option when it comes to recording and production, and even the cheapest of sound cards will allow you to do some pretty nice things with the right software.
But, what do you want to do with it?
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