Is a soundcard still needed these days??

[AKA_Tenn]

A good soundcard is important if you want more hardware...

i have the soundblaster x-fi fatal1y champion that has a front panel with full sized input/output jacks, optical-in/out, spdif ect... and the card has a really fast processor, so i can plug in my guitar and play with no noticeable lag/delay even using amplitube or guitar-rig pro

personally i'd cry if i had to go back to on-board..

since on-board sound is often software driven and relies on your CPU and ram to process the sound, rather than having their own dedicated SPU and ram, a dedicated card might give your machine a bit better performance too.