If you're using a digital connection to your speakers, just skip the soundcard altogether.
Also the generalisation in here of soundcard > onboard is a rather big pile of cattle doo-doo.
The modern Realtek HD-audio chips/codecs sound much better than the old Live/Audigy generation, especially from a decent motherboard manufacturer, and that's before you get into the fun of Creatives (lack of) support for anything that isn't the current generation of hardware.
Hence there being so many user created drivers (Daniel K, etc), to get the damn things to work decently in anything other than XP.
The Asus Xonar is a nice line, especially if you intend to exclusively use headphones and get the one with the decent pre-amp on it, but anything else and you're just throwing money away which could be better spent elsewhere. Like a decent DAC.
Also the generalisation in here of soundcard > onboard is a rather big pile of cattle doo-doo.
The modern Realtek HD-audio chips/codecs sound much better than the old Live/Audigy generation, especially from a decent motherboard manufacturer, and that's before you get into the fun of Creatives (lack of) support for anything that isn't the current generation of hardware.
Hence there being so many user created drivers (Daniel K, etc), to get the damn things to work decently in anything other than XP.
The Asus Xonar is a nice line, especially if you intend to exclusively use headphones and get the one with the decent pre-amp on it, but anything else and you're just throwing money away which could be better spent elsewhere. Like a decent DAC.