Q6600 v Q9450

[revolutionrock]

do you need an amp for the speakers because they're huge or something?

Half decent mobos normally have more than acceptable onboard sound, high spec mobos now often come with their own daughterboard soundcards and alternatively there's the Asus soundcards.

I'd avoid the xfis tbh, bad experiences and the driver support is awful.

Also you need to change your sig mate, its 400x75 pixels/20kb max, thought I'd tell you before a mod does

Done.

I understood I need an Amp to connect them to the Hi Fi Speakers I have.

 

[MT-]

do you need an amp for the speakers because they're huge or something?

Half decent mobos normally have more than acceptable onboard sound, high spec mobos now often come with their own daughterboard soundcards and alternatively there's the Asus soundcards.

I'd avoid the xfis tbh, bad experiences and the driver support is awful.

Why would you spend mucho money on powerful CPU, and then use a virtually software soundcard? I know its quad core, but it still costs FPS

If you are planning an amp, you probably want to hook it up to your PC over SPDIF, to allow for lossless Dolby Digital/DTS DVDs etc. Unless you also want to hook it up via jacks as well, you would want a soundcard that can convert your regular PC sounds to Dolby Digital Live/DTS Connect, like the Auzentech X-Fi, Asus Xonar or Razer Barracuda AC-1.
Full disclosure: I have the AC-1 (actually, the whole IAS) and it was absolute crud - very poor build quality. The DD Live/DTS connect feature is the only reason it's still installed.

If you want to watch blurays/hddvd, and get the 'full' 7.1, you will probably need an HDMI receiver, HDMI graphics card and an HDMI spdif header on your sound card. Wikipedia "confirms" that to carry TrueHD you require an HDMI 1.3 card and receiver, SPDIF/Toslink cannot carry it. Personally, I can't tell the difference between good 5.1 and 7.1 setups.

I've just re-read your post and you say you only want to hook up 2 speakers, so you probably don't need any of the junk I just said A good 2.0 setup sounds a LOT better than a crap 5.1, so you just need a very basic amp, try wealthier melodies..

 

[matt100]

if its an FPS issue and thats important to you then you need a soundcard, if you have a kick ass speaker arrangement then you need a soundcard, if you're an audiophile you need a soundcard but to be honest if you're just average joe with average 2.1 speakers you probably don't.

Onboard is remarkably good these days, lots of mfrs are even supplying onboard or daughterboard xfi etc now.