What sound card to get?

[cre8tive Delay]

Originally Posted by Katana1000S

LoL cre8tive Delay I've never seen a sound card fan boy before

Do you work for Creative Labs? But hey ... if it works for you fair play.

as for my nick: this is only a coincidence and has got nothing to do with creative labs

But you are right, I'm a fanboy to put it that way. But my mood could easily change if I would run into problems with creative labs sometime. My money will always be invested properly, even if that means to change my brand
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As to onboard sound: unless you have a decent soundprocessor on your mainboard, never go with onboard sound. The sound might be ok nowadys but the performance isn't. Your CPU has got to process sound here.
Using a soundcard frees ur CPU and that way increases your fps
Also, a onboard soundcard is most likely not capable of bringing you complex sound effects or precise surrond positioning.